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v/ 

THE WORKS OF 
HENRY VAN DYKE 
AVALON EDITION, 
VOLUME II 
*« 

OUTDOOR ESSAYS 
II / 










4 

\ 


\ 


t 





FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

AND SOME OTHER UNCERTAIN 
THINGS 


BY 


HENRY VAN DYKE 

u 


y 


“ Now I conclude that not only in Physicke, but likewise in 
sundry more certaine arts, fortune hath great share in them.” 

M. de Montaigne, Divers Events . 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1920 




Copyright, 1899, 1908, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons 



MW -8 1920 v 


c~ 

©C!. A 565920 




DEDICATION 


TO MY LADY 
GRAYGOWN 

HERE 

is the basket; 

I bring it home to you. 

There are no great fish in it. 

But perhaps there may be one or two little 
ones which will be to your taste. And there 
are a few shining pebbles from the bed of the 
brook, and ferns from the cool, green woods, 
and wild flowers from the places that you remem- 
ber. I would fain console you, if I could, for 
the hardship of having married an angler: a man 
who relapses into his mania with the return of 
every spring, and never sees a little river with- 
out wishing to fish in it. But after all, we have 
had good times together as we have followed the 
stream of life towards the sea. And we have 
passed through the dark days without losing 
heart, because we were comrades. So let this 
book tell you one thing that is certain. 

In all the life of your fisherman 
the best piece of luck 
is just 
YOU. 


J 





CONTENTS 


I. 

Fisherman’s Luck 

1 

II. 

The Thrilling Moment 

33 

III. 

Taxability 

47 

IV. 

A Wild Strawberry 

73 

V. 

Lovers and Landscape 

93 

VI. 

A Fatal Success 

111 

X VII. 

Fishing in Books 

129 

VIII. 

A Norwegian Honeymoon 

155 

- IX. 

Who Owns the Mountains ? 

179 

X. 

A Lazy, Idle Brook 

189 

XI. 

The Open Fire 

213 

XII. 

“ Little Boa tie ” 

243 


Index 

247 



FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


“ She could not conceive a game wanting the sprightly infusion of chance , 
— the handsome excuses of good fortune .” — Charles Lamb: Essays of 
Elia. 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


TT AVE you ever happened to notice the 
A A quality of the greetings that belong to 
certain occupations? 

There is something about these salutations in 
kind which is singularly taking and grateful to 
the ear. They are as much better than an or- 
dinary “good day” or a flat “how are you?” 
as a folk-song of Scotland or the Tyrol is better 
than the futile love-ditty of the drawing-room. 
They have a spicy and rememberable flavour. 
They speak to the imagination and point the 
way to treasure-trove. 

There is a touch of dignity in them, too, for 
all they are so free and easy — the dignity of in- 
dependence, the native spirit of one who takes 
for granted that his mode of living has a right 
to make its own forms of speech. I admire a 
man who does not hesitate to salute the world 
in the dialect of his calling. 

How salty and stimulating, for example, is 
the sailorman’s hail of “Ship ahoy !” It is like 
a breeze laden with briny odours and a pleasant 
dash of spray. The miners in some parts of 
3 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


Germany have a good greeting for their dusky 
trade. They cry to one who is going down the 
shaft, “Gluck auf /” All the perils of an un- 
derground adventure and all the joys of seeing 
the sun again are compressed into a word. 
Even the trivial salutation which the telephone 
has lately created and claimed for its peculiar 
use — “ Hello, hello!” — seems to me to have a 
kind of fitness and fascination. It is like a 
thoroughbred bulldog, ugly enough to be at- 
tractive. There is a lively, concentrated, elec- 
tric air about it. It makes courtesy wait upon 
dispatch, and reminds us that we live in an age 
when it is necessary to be wide awake. 

I have often wished that every human em- 
ployment might evolve its own appropriate 
greeting. Some of them would be queer, no 
doubt; but at least they would be an improve- 
ment on the wearisome iteration of “ Good- 
evening” and “Good-morning,” and the mo- 
notonous inquiry, “How do you do?” — a ques- 
tion so conventional that it seldom tarries for 
an answer. Under the new and more natural 
system of etiquette, when you passed the time 
of day with a man you would know his business, 
and the salutations of the market-place would 
be full of interest. 

As for my chosen pursuit of angling (which I 
4 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

follow with diligence when not interrupted by 
less important concerns), I rejoice with every 
true fisherman that it has a greeting all its own 
and of a most honourable antiquity. There is 
no written record of its origin. But it is quite 
certain that since the days after the Flood, 
when Deucalion 

“Did first this art invent 
Of angling , and his people taught the same” 

two honest and good-natured anglers have never 
met each other by the way without crying out, 
“What luck?” 

Here, indeed, is an epitome of the gentle art. 
Here is the spirit of it embodied in a word and 
paying its respects to you with its native ac- 
cent. Here you see its secret charm uncon- 
sciously disclosed. The attraction of angling 
for all the ages of man, from the cradle to the 
grave, lies in its uncertainty. ’Tis an affair of 
luck. 

No amount of preparation in the matter of 
rods and lines and hooks and lures and nets 
and creels can change its essential character. 
No excellence of skill in casting the delusive fly 
or adjusting the tempting bait upon the hook 
can make the result secure. You may reduce 
the chances, but you cannot eliminate them. 
5 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


There are a thousand points at which fortune 
may intervene. The state of the weather, the 
height of the water, the appetite of the fish, 
the presence or absence of other anglers — all 
these indeterminable elements enter into the 
reckoning of your success. There is no com- 
bination of stars in the firmament by which you 
can forecast the piscatorial future. When you 
go a-fishing, you just take your chances; you 
offer yourself as a candidate for anything that 
may be going; you try your luck. 

There are certain days that are favourites 
among anglers, who regard them as propitious 
for the sport. I know a man who believes that 
the fish always rise better on Sunday than on 
any other day in the week. He complains bit- 
terly of this supposed fact, because his religious 
scruples will not allow him to take advantage of 
it. He confesses that he has sometimes thought 
seriously of joining the Seventh-Day Baptists. 

Among the Pennsylvania Dutch, in the Alle- 
ghany Mountains, I have found a curious tradi- 
tion that Ascension Day is the luckiest in the 
year for fishing. On that morning the district 
school is thinly attended, and you must be on 
the stream very early if you do not wish to find 
wet footprints on the stones ahead of you. 

But in fact, all these superstitions about 
6 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


fortunate days are idle and presumptuous. If 
there were such days in the calendar, a kind 
and firm Providence would never permit the 
race of man to discover them. It would rob 
life of one of its principal attractions, and make 
fishing altogether too easy to be interesting. 

Fisherman’s luck is so notorious that it has 
passed into a proverb. But the fault with that 
familiar saying is that it is too short and too 
narrow to cover half the variations of the 
angler’s possible experience. For if his luck 
should be bad, there is no portion of his anat- 
omy, from the crown of his head to the soles of 
his feet, that may not be thoroughly wet. But 
if it should be good, he may receive an unearned 
blessing of abundance not only in his basket, 
but also in his head and his heart, his memory 
and his fancy. He may come home from some 
obscure, ill-named, lovely stream — some Dry 
Brook, or Southwest Branch of Smith’s Run — 
with a creel full of trout, and a mind full of 
grateful recollections of flowers that seemed to 
bloom for his sake, and birds that sang a new, 
sweet, friendly message to his tired soul. He 
may climb down to “ Tommy’s Rock” below 
the cliffs at Newport (as I have done many a 
day with my lady Greygown), and, all unnoticed 
by the idle, weary promenaders in the path of 
7 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


fashion, haul in a basketful of blackfish, and at 
the same time look out across the shining sap- 
phire waters and inherit a wondrous good for- 
tune of dreams — 

“Have glimpses that will make him less forlorn ; 

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea , 

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.” 

But all this, you must remember, depends 
upon something secret and incalculable, some- 
thing that we can neither command nor predict. 
It is an affair of gift, not of wages. Fish (and 
the other good things which are like sauce to 
the catching of them) cast no shadow before. 
Water is the emblem of instability. No one 
can tell what he shall draw out of it until he 
has taken in his line. Herein are found the 
true charm and profit of angling for all persons 
of a pure and childlike mind. 

Look at those two venerable gentlemen float- 
ing in a skiff upon the clear waters of Lake 
George. One of them is a successful statesman, 
an ex-President of the United States, a lawyer 
versed in all the curious eccentricities of the 
“ lawless science of the law.” The other is a 
learned doctor of medicine, able to give a name 
to all diseases from which men have imagined 
8 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


that they suffered, and to invent new ones for 
those who are tired of vulgar maladies. But 
all their learning is forgotten, their cares and 
controversies are laid aside, in “innocuous 
desuetude.” The Summer Schools of Sociology 
are assembled. The Medical Congresses are in 
session. But these two men care not — no, not 
so much as the value of a single live bait. The 
sun shines upon them with a fervent heat, but 
it irks them not. The rain descends, and the 
winds blow and beat upon them, but they are 
unmoved. They are securely anchored here in 
the lee of Sabbath-Day Point. 

What enchantment binds them to that in- 
considerable spot ? What magic fixes their 
eyes upon the point of a fishing-rod, as if it 
were the finger of destiny? It is the enchant- 
ment of uncertainty: the same natural magic 
that draws the little suburban boys in the spring 
of the year, with their strings and pin-hooks, 
around the shallow ponds where dace and red- 
fins hide; the same irresistible charm that fixes 
a row of city gamins, like ragged and disreputa- 
ble fish-crows, on the end of a pier where blear- 
eyed flounders sometimes lurk in the muddy 
water. Let the philosopher explain it as he 
will. Let the moralist reprehend it as he 
chooses. There is nothing that attracts human 
9 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


nature more powerfully than the sport of tempt- 
ing the unknown with a fishing-line. 

Those ancient anglers have set out upon an 
exodus from the tedious realm of the definite, 
the fixed, the must -certainly -come -to -pass. 
They are on a holiday in the free country of 
peradventure. They do not know at this mo- 
ment whether the next turn of Fortune’s reel 
will bring up a perch or a pickerel, a sunfish or 
a black bass. It may be a hideous catfish or a 
squirming eel, or it may be a lake-trout, the 
grand prize in the Lake George lottery. There 
they sit, those gray-haired lads, full of hope, 
yet equally prepared for resignation; taking no 
thought for the morrow, and ready to make 
the best of to-day; harmless and happy players 
at the best of all games of chance. 

“In other words,” I hear some severe and 
sour-complexioned reader say, “in plain lan- 
guage, they are a pair of old gamblers.” 

Yes, if it pleases you to call honest men by a 
bad name. But they risk nothing that is not 
their own; and if they lose, they are not im- 
poverished. They desire nothing that belongs 
to other men; and if they win, no one is robbed. 
If all gambling were like that, it would be diffi- 
cult to see the harm in it. Indeed, a daring 
moralist might even assert, and prove by argu- 
10 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

ment, that so innocent a delight in the taking 
of chances is an aid to virtue. 

Do you remember Martin Luther’s reasoning 
on the subject of “ excellent large pike”? He 
maintains that God would never have created 
them so good to the taste, if He had not meant 
them to be eaten. And for the same reason I 
conclude that this world would never have been 
left so full of uncertainties, nor human nature 
framed so as to find a peculiar joy and exhilara- 
tion in meeting them bravely and cheerfully, if 
it had not been divinely intended that most of 
our amusement and much of our education 
should come from this source. 

“Chance” is a disreputable word, I know. 
It is supposed by many pious persons to be im- 
proper and almost blasphemous to use it. But 
I am not one of those who share this verbal 
prejudice. I am inclined rather to believe that 
it is a good word to which a bad reputation has 
been given. I feel grateful to that admirable 
“psychologist who writes like a novelist,” Mr. 
William James, for his brilliant defence of it. 
For what does it mean, after all, but that 
some things happen in a certain way which might 
have happened in another way? Where is the 
immorality, the irreverence, the atheism in such 
a supposition? Certainly God must be com- 
il 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


petent to govern a world in which there are pos- 
sibilities of various kinds, just as well as one in 
which every event is inevitably determined be- 
forehand. St. Peter and the other fishermen- 
disciples on the Lake of Galilee were perfectly 
free to cast their net on either side of the ship. 
So far as they could see, so far as any one could 
see, it was a matter of chance where they chose 
to cast it. But it was not until they let it down, 
at the Master’s word, on the right side that 
they had good luck. And not the least element 
of their joy in the draft of fishes was that it 
brought a change of fortune. 

Leave the metaphysics of the question on the 
table for the present. As a matter of fact, it is 
plain that our human nature is adapted to con- 
ditions variable, undetermined, and hidden from 
our view. We are not fitted to live in a world 
where a+b always equals c, and there is nothing 
more to follow. The interest of life’s equation 
arrives with the appearance of x , the unknown 
quantity. A settled, unchangeable, clearly fore- 
seeable order of things does not suit our con- 
stitution. It tends to melancholy and a fatty 
heart. Creatures of habit we are undoubtedly; 
but it is one of our most fixed habits to be fond 
of variety. The man who is never surprised 
does not know the taste of happiness, and un- 

n 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


less the unexpected sometimes happens to us, 
we are most grievously disappointed. 

Much of the tediousness of highly civilized 
life comes from its smoothness and regularity. 
To-day is like yesterday, and we think that we 
can predict to-morrow. Of course we cannot 
really do so. The chances are still there. But 
we have covered them up so deeply with the 
artificialities of life that we lose sight of them. 
It seems as if everything in our neat little world 
were arranged, and provided for, and reason- 
ably sure to come to pass. The best way of 
escape from this Tcedium vitce is through a 
recreation like angling, not only because it is 
so evidently a matter of luck, but also because 
it tempts us into a wilder, freer life. It leads 
almost inevitably to camping out, which is a 
wholesome and sanitary imprudence. 

It is curious and pleasant, to my apprehen- 
sion, to observe how many people in New Eng- 
land, one of whose States is called “the land of 
Steady Habits,” are sensible of the joy of chang- 
ing them, — out of doors. These good folk turn 
out from their comfortable farm-houses and 
their snug suburban cottages to go a-gypsying 
for a fortnight among the mountains or beside 
the sea. You see their white tents gleaming 
from the pine-groves around the little lakes, 
13 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


and catch glimpses of their bathing-clothes 
drying in the sun on the wiry grass that fringes 
the sand-dunes. Happy fugitives from the 
bondage of routine ! They have found out that 
a long journey is not necessary to a good vaca- 
tion. You may reach the Forest of Arden in a 
buckboard. The Fortunate Isles are within 
sailing distance in a dory. And a voyage on 
the river Pactolus is open to any one who can 
paddle a canoe. 

I was talking — or rather listening — with a 
barber, the other day, in the sleepy old town of 
Rivermouth. He told me, in one of those easy 
confidences which seem to make the razor run 
more smoothly, that it had been the custom of 
his family, for some twenty years past, to for- 
sake their commodious dwelling on Anchor 
Street every summer, and emigrate six miles, 
in a wagon to Wallis Sands, where they spent 
the month of August very merrily under can- 
vas. Here was a sensible household for you ! 
They did not feel bound to waste a year’s in- 
come on a four weeks’ holiday. They were not 
of those foolish folk who run across the sea, 
carefully carrying with them the same tiresome 
mind that worried them at home. They got a 
change of air by making an alteration of life. 
They escaped from the Land of Egypt and the 
14 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

House of Bondage by stepping out into the 
wilderness and going a-fishing. 

The people who always live in houses, and 
sleep on beds, and walk on pavements, and buy 
their food from butchers and bakers and grocers, 
are not the most blessed inhabitants of this wide 
and various earth. The circumstances of their 
existence are too mathematical and secure for 
perfect contentment. They live at second or 
third hand. They are boarders in the world. 
Everything is done for them by somebody else. 

It is almost impossible for anything very in- 
teresting to happen to them. They must get 
their excitement out of the newspapers, reading 
of the hairbreadth escapes and moving accidents 
that befall people in real life. What do these 
tame ducks really know of the adventure of 
living? If the weather is bad, they are snugly 
housed. If it is cold, there is a furnace in the 
cellar. If they are hungry, the shops are near 
at hand. It is all as dull, flat, stale, and un- 
profitable as adding up a column of figures. 
They might as well be brought up in an in- 
cubator. 

But when man abides in tents, after the man- 
ner of the early patriarchs, the face of the world 
is renewed. The vagaries of the clouds become 
significant. You watch the sky with a lover’s 
15 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


look, eager to know whether it will smile or 
frown. When you lie at night upon your bed 
of boughs and hear the rain pattering on the 
canvas close above your head, you wonder 
whether it is a long storm or only a shower. 

The rising wind shakes the tent-flaps. Are 
the pegs well driven down and the cords firmly 
fastened ? You fall asleep again and wake 
later, to hear the rain drumming still more 
loudly on the tight cloth, and the big breeze 
snoring through the forest, and the waves 
plunging along the beach. A stormy day ? 
Well, you must cut plenty of wood and keep 
the camp-fire glowing, for it will be hard to 
start it up again, if you let it get too low. 
There is little use in fishing or hunting in such 
a storm. But there is plenty to do in the camp : 
guns to be cleaned, tackle to be put in order, 
clothes to be mended, a good story of adven- 
ture to be read, a belated letter to be written to 
some poor wretch in a summer hotel, a game of 
hearts or cribbage to be played, or a hunting- 
trip to be planned for the return of fair weather. 
The tent is perfectly dry. A little trench dug 
around it carries off the surplus water, and 
luckily it is pitched with the side to the lake, 
so that you get the pleasant heat of the fire 
without the unendurable smoke. Cooking in 
16 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


the rain has its disadvantages. But how good 
the supper tastes when it is served up on a tin 
plate, with an empty box for a table and a roll 
of blankets at the foot of the bed for a seat ! 

A day, two days, three days, the storm may 
continue, according to your luck. I have been 
out in the woods for a fortnight without a drop 
of rain or a sign of dust. Again, I have tented 
on the shore of a big lake for a week, waiting 
for an obstinate tempest to pass by. 

Look now, just at nightfall: is there not a 
little lifting and breaking of the clouds in the 
west, a little shifting of the wind toward a 
better quarter? You go to bed with cheerful 
hopes. A dozen times in the darkness you are 
half awake, and listening drowsily to the sounds 
of the storm. Are they waxing or waning? Is 
that louder pattering a new burst of rain, or is 
it only the plumping of the big drops as they 
are shaken from the trees? See, the dawn has 
come, and the gray light glimmers through the 
canvas. In a little while you will know your 
fate. 

Look! There is a patch of bright yellow 
radiance on the peak of the tent. The shadow 
of a leaf dances over it. The sun must be shin- 
ing. Good luck! and up with you, for it is a 
glorious morning. 


17 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


The woods are glistening as fresh and fair as 
if they had been new-created overnight. The 
water sparkles, and tiny waves are dancing and 
splashing all along the shore. Scarlet berries of 
the mountain-ash hang around the lake. A 
pair of kingfishers dart back and forth across 
the bay, in flashes of living blue. A golden 
eagle swings silently around his circle, far up in 
the cloudless sky. The air is full of pleasant 
sounds, but there is no noise. The world is full 
of joyful life, but there is no crowd and no con- 
fusion. There is no factory chimney to darken 
the day with its smoke, no trolley-car to split 
the silence with its shriek and smite the in- 
dignant ear with the clanging of its impudent 
bell. No lumberman’s axe has robbed the en- 
circling forests of their glory of great trees. 
No fires have swept over the hills and left be- 
hind them the desolation of a bristly landscape. 
All is fresh and sweet, calm and clear and bright. 

’Twas rather a rude jest of Nature, that 
tempest of yesterday. But if you have taken 
it in good part, you are all the more ready for 
her caressing mood to-day. And now you 
must be off to get your dinner — not to order it 
at a shop, but to look for it in the woods and 
waters. You are ready to do your best with 
rod or gun. You will use all the skill you have 
18 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


as hunter or fisherman. But what you shall 
find, and whether you shall subsist on bacon 
and biscuit, or feast on trout and partridges, is, 
after all, a matter of luck. 

I profess that it appears to me not only 
pleasant, but also salutary, to be in this con- 
dition. It brings us home to the plain realities 
of life; it teaches us that a man ought to work 
before he eats; it reminds us that, after he has 
done all he can, he must still rely upon a mys- 
terious bounty for his daily bread. It says to 
us, in homely and familiar words, that life was 
meant to be uncertain, that no man can tell 
what a day will bring forth, and that it is the 
part of wisdom to be prepared for disappoint- 
ments and grateful for all kinds of small mercies. 

There is a story in that fragrant book. The 
Little Flowers of St. Francis , which I wish to 
transcribe here, without tying a moral to it, 
lest any one should accuse me of preaching. 

“ Hence [says the quaint old chronicler], hav- 
ing assigned to his companions the other parts 
of the world, St. Francis, taking Brother Maxi- 
mus as his comrade, set forth toward the prov- 
ince of France. And coming one day to a cer- 
tain town, and being very hungry, they begged 
their bread as they went, according to the rule 
19 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

of their order, for the love of God. And St. 
Francis went through one quarter of the town, 
and Brother Maximus through another. But 
forasmuch as St. Francis was a man mean and 
low of stature, and hence was reputed a vile 
beggar by such as knew him not, he only re- 
ceived a few scanty crusts and mouthfuls of 
dry bread. But to Brother Maximus, who was 
large and well favoured, were given good pieces 
and big, and an abundance of bread, yea, whole 
loaves. Having thus begged, they met together 
without the town to eat, at a place where there 
was a clear spring and a fair large stone, upon 
which each spread forth the gifts that he had 
received. And St. Francis, seeing that the 
pieces of bread begged by Brother Maximus 
were bigger and better than his own, rejoiced 
greatly, saying, ‘Oh, Brother Maximus, we are 
not worthy of so great a treasure.’ As he re- 
peated these words many times, Brother Maxi- 
mus made answer: ‘Father, how can you talk 
of treasures when there is such great poverty 
and such lack of all things needful? Here is 
neither napkin nor knife, neither board nor 
trencher, neither house nor table, neither man- 
servant nor maid-servant.’ St. Francis replied: 
‘And this is what I reckon a great treasure, 
where naught is made ready by human industry, 
20 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

but all that is here is prepared by Divine Provi- 
dence, as is plainly set forth in the bread which 
we have begged, in the table of fair stone, and 
in the spring of clear water. And therefore I 
would that we should pray to God that He teach 
us with all our hearts to love the treasure of 
holy poverty, which is so noble a thing, and 
whose servant is God the Lord.’” 

I know of but one fairer description of a re- 
past in the open air; and that is where we are 
told how certain poor fishermen, coming in very 
weary after a night of toil (and one of them very 
wet after swimming ashore), found their Master 
standing on the bank of the lake waiting for 
them. But it seems that he must have been 
busy in their behalf while he was waiting; for 
there was a bright fire of coals burning on the 
shore, and a goodly fish broiling thereon, and 
bread to eat with it. And when the Master 
had asked them about their fishing, he said, 
“Come, now, and take your breakfast.” So 
they sat down around the fire, and with his own 
hands he served them with the bread and the 
fish. 

Of all the banquets that have ever been given 
upon earth, that is the one in which I would 
rather have had a share. 

21 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


But it is now time that we should return to 
our fishing. And let us observe with gratitude 
that almost all of the pleasures that are con- 
nected with this pursuit — its accompaniments 
and variations, which run along with the tune 
and weave an embroidery of delight around it 
— have an accidental and gratuitous quality 
about them. They are not to be counted upon 
beforehand. They are like something that is 
thrown into a purchase by a generous and open- 
handed dealer, to make us pleased with our 
bargain and inclined to come back to the same 
shop. 

If I knew, for example, before setting out for 
a day on the brook, precisely what birds I 
should see, and what pretty little scenes in the 
drama of woodland life were to be enacted be- 
fore my eyes, the expedition would lose more 
than half its charm. But, in fact, it is almost 
entirely a matter of luck, and that is why it 
never grows tiresome. 

The ornithologist knows pretty well where to 
look for the birds, and he goes directly to the 
places where he can find them, and proceeds to 
study them intelligently and systematically. 
But the angler who idles down the stream takes 
them as they come, and all his observations have 
a flavour of surprise in them. 

22 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

He hears a familiar song, — one that he has 
often heard at a distance, but never identified, 
— a cheery, rustic cadence sounding from a low 
pine-tree close beside him. He looks up care- 
fully through the needles and discovers a hooded 
warbler, a tiny, restless creature, dressed in 
green and yellow, with two white feathers in 
its tail, like the ends of a sash, and a glossy little 
black bonnet drawn closely about its golden 
head. He will never forget that song again. 
It will make the woods seem homelike to him, 
many a time, as he hears it ringing through the 
afternoon, like the call of a small country girl 
playing at hide-and-seek: “See me; here I be .” 

Another day he sits down on a mossy log be- 
side a cold, trickling spring to eat his lunch. 
It has been a barren day for birds. Perhaps he 
has fallen into the fault of pursuing his sport 
too intensely, and tramped along the stream 
looking for nothing but fish. Perhaps this part 
of the grove has really been deserted by its 
feathered inhabitants, scared away by a prowl- 
ing hawk or driven out by nest-hunters. But 
now, without notice, the luck changes. A sur- 
prise-party of redstarts breaks into full play 
around him. All through the dark-green shadow 
of the hemlocks they flash like little candles — 
candelitas , the Cubans call them. Their bril- 
23 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


liant markings of orange and black, and their 
fluttering, airy, graceful movements, make them 
most welcome visitors. There is no bird in the 
bush easier to recognize or pleasanter to watch. 
They run along the branches and dart and tum- 
ble through the air in fearless chase of invisible 
flies and moths. All the time they keep un- 
folding and furling their rounded tails, spreading 
them out and waving them and closing them 
suddenly, just as the Cuban girls manage their 
fans. In fact, the redstarts are the tiny fan- 
tail pigeons of the forest. 

There are other things about the birds, be- 
side their musical talents and their good looks, 
that the fisherman has a chance to observe on 
his lucky days. He may see something of their 
courage and their devotion to their young. 

I suppose a bird, in spite of its natural timid- 
ity, is the bravest creature that lives. From 
which we may learn that true courage is not 
incompatible with nervousness, and that heroism 
does not mean the absence of fear, but the con- 
quest of it. Who does not remember the first 
time that he ever came upon a hen-partridge 
with her brood, as he was strolling through the 
woods in June? How splendidly the old bird 
forgets herself in her efforts to defend and hide 
her young ! 


24 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

Smaller birds are no less daring. One evening 
last summer I was walking up the Ristigouche 
from Camp Harmony to fish for salmon at 
Mowett’s Rock, where my canoe was waiting 
for me. As I stepped out from a thicket on to 
the shingly bank of the river, a spotted sand- 
piper teetered along before me, followed by 
three young ones. Frightened at first, the 
mother flew out a few feet over the water. But 
the piperlings could not fly, having no feathers; 
and they crept under a crooked log. I rolled 
the log over very gently and took one of the 
cowering creatures into my hand — a tiny, pal- 
pitating scrap of life, covered with soft gray 
down, and peeping shrilly, like a Liliputian 
chicken. And now the mother was transformed. 
Her fear was changed into fury. She was a 
bully, a fighter, an Amazon in feathers. She 
flew at me with loud cries, dashing herself al- 
most into my face. I was a tyrant, a robber, a 
kidnapper, and she called heaven to witness 
that she would never give up her offspring with- 
out a struggle. Then she changed her tactics 
and appealed to my baser passions. She fell 
to the ground and fluttered around me as if her 
wing were broken. “Look!” she seemed to 
say, “I am bigger than that poor little baby. 
If you must eat something, eat me ! My wing 
25 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


is lame. I can’t fly. You can easily catch 
me. Let that little bird go!” And so I did; 
and the whole family disappeared in the bushes 
as if by magic. I wondered whether the mother 
was saying to herself, after the manner of her 
sex, that men are stupid things, after all, and 
no match for the cleverness of a female who 
stoops to deception in a righteous cause. 

Now, that trivial experience was what I call 
a piece of good luck — for me, and, in the event, 
for the sandpiper. But it is doubtful whether 
it would be quite so fresh and pleasant in the 
remembrance, if it had not also fallen to my 
lot to take two uncommonly good salmon on 
that same evening, in a dry season. 

Never believe a fisherman when he tells you 
that he does not care about the fish he catches. 
He may say that he angles only for the pleasure 
of being out-of-doors, and that he is just as 
well contented when he takes nothing as when 
he makes a good catch. He may think so, but 
it is not true. He is not telling a deliberate 
falsehood. He is only assuming an unconscious 
pose, and indulging in a delicate bit of self- 
flattery. Even if it were true, it would not be 
at all to his credit. 

Watch him on that lucky day when he comes 
home with a full basket of trout on his shoulder,. 

26 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


or a quartette of silver salmon covered with 
green branches in the bottom of the canoe. His 
face is broader than it was when he went out, 
and there is a sparkle of triumph in his eye. 
“It is naught, it is naught,” he says, in modest 
depreciation of his triumph. But you shall see 
that he lingers fondly about the place where the 
fish are displayed upon the grass, and does not 
fail to look carefully at the scales when they are 
weighed, and has an attentive ear for the com- 
ments of admiring spectators. You shall find, 
moreover, that he is not unwilling to narrate 
the story of the capture — how the big fish rose 
short, four times, to four different flies, and 
finally took a small Black Dose, and played all 
over the pool, and ran down a terribly stiff 
rapid to the next pool below, and sulked for 
twenty minutes, and had to be stirred up with 
stones, and made such a long fight that, when 
he came in at last, the hold of the hook was al- 
most worn through, and it fell out of his mouth 
as he touched the shore. Listen to this tale as 
it is told, with endless variations, by every man 
who has brought home a fine fish, and you will 
perceive that the fisherman does care for his 
luck, after all. 

And why not ? I am no friend to the people 
who receive the bounties of Providence without 
27 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


visible gratitude. When the sixpence falls into 
your hat, you may laugh. When the messenger 
of an unexpected blessing takes you by the 
hand and lifts you up and bids you walk, you 
may leap and run and sing for joy, even as the 
lame man, whom St. Peter healed, skipped 
piously and rejoiced aloud as he passed through 
the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. There is no 
virtue in solemn indifference. Joy is just as 
much a duty as beneficence is. Thankfulness 
is the other side of mercy. 

When you have good luck in anything, you 
ought to be glad. Indeed, if you are not glad, 
you are not really lucky. 

But boasting and self-glorification I would 
have excluded, and most of all from the be- 
haviour of the angler. He, more than other 
men, is dependent for his success upon the favour 
of an unseen benefactor. Let his skill and in- 
dustry be never so great, he can do nothing 
unless la bonne chance comes to him. 

I was once fishing on a fair little river, the 
P’tit Saguenay, with two excellent anglers and 

pleasant companions, H. E. G and C. S. 

D . They had done all that was humanly 

possible to secure good sport. The stream had 
been theoretically protected by a well-paid 
guardian. The anglers had boxes full of beau- 
28 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


tiful flies, and casting-lines imported from Eng- 
land, and a rod for every fish in the river. But 
the weather was “dour,” and the water 
“drumly,” and every day the lumbermen sent 
a “drive” of ten thousand spruce logs rushing 
down the flooded stream. For three days we 
had not seen a salmon, and on the fourth, de- 
spairing, we went down to angle for sea-trout 
in the tide of the greater Saguenay. There, in 
the salt water, where men say the salmon never 

take the fly, H. E. G , fishing with a small 

trout-rod, a poor, short line, and an ancient red 
ibis of the common kind, rose and hooked a 
lordly salmon of at least five-and-thirty pounds. 
Was not this pure luck? 

Pride is surely the most unbecoming of all 
vices in a fisherman. For though intelligence 
and practice and patience and genius, and many 
other noble things which modesty forbids him to 
mention, enter into his pastime, so that it is, as 
Izaak Walton has firmly maintained, an art; 
yet, because fortune still plays a controlling 
hand in the game, its net results should never 
be spoken of with a haughty and vain spirit. 
Let not the angler imitate Timoleon, who 
boasted of his luck and lost it. It is tempting 
Providence to print the record of your wonder- 
ful catches in the sporting newspapers; or at 
29 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


least, if it must be done, there should stand at 
the head of the column some humble, thankful 
motto, like “Non nobis , Domine.” Even Father 
Izaak, when he has a fish on his line, says, with 
a due sense of human limitations, 4 4 There is a 
trout now, and a good one too, if I can but hold 
him /” 

This reminds me that we left H. E. G , a 

a few sentences back, playing his unexpected 
salmon, on a trout-rod, in the Saguenay. Four 
times that great fish leaped into the air; twice 
he suffered the pliant reed to guide him toward 
the shore, and twice ran out again to deeper 
water. Then his spirit awoke within him: he 
bent the rod like a willow wand, dashed toward 
the middle of the river, broke the line as if it 
had been pack-thread, and sailed triumphantly 
away to join the white whales that were tumbling 
in the tide. “Whe-e-ew,” they said, “whe-e-ew ! 
psha-a-aw !” blowing out their breath in long, 
soft sighs as they rolled about like huge snow- 
balls in the black water. But what did H. E. 

G say? He sat him quietly down upon a 

rock and reeled in the remnant of his line, ut- 
tering these remarkable and Christian words: 
“Those marsouins ,” said he, “describe the situa- 
tion rather mildly. But it was good fun while 
it lasted.” 


30 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


Again I remembered a saying of Walton: 
“Well, Scholar, you must endure worse luck 
sometimes, or you will never make a good 
angler.” 

Or a good man, either, I am sure. For he 
who knows only how to enjoy, and not to en- 
dure, is ill-fitted to go down the stream of life 
through such a world as this. 

I would not have you to suppose, gentle 
reader, that in discoursing of fisherman’s luck 
I have in mind only those things which may be 
taken with a hook. It is a parable of human 
experience. I have been thinking, for instance, 
of Walton’s life as well as of his angling: of the 
losses and sufferings that he, a firm Royalist, 
endured when the Commonwealth men came 
marching into London town; of the consoling 
days that were granted to him, in troublous 
times, on the banks of the Lea and the Dove 
and the New River, and the good friends that 
he made there, with whom he took sweet coun- 
sel in adversity; of the little children who 
played in his house for a few years, and then 
were called away into the silent land where he 
could hear their voices no longer. I was think- 
ing how quietly and peaceably he lived through 
it all, not complaining nor desponding, but try- 
ing to do his work well, whether he was keep- 
31 , 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


in g a shop or writing books, and seeking to 
prove himself an honest man and a cheerful 
companion, and never scorning to take with a 
thankful heart such small comforts and recrea- 
tions as came to him. 

It is a plain, homely, old-fashioned medita- 
tion, reader, but not unprofitable. When I 
talk to you of fisherman’s luck, I do not forget 
that there are deeper things behind it. I re- 
member that what we call our fortunes, good or 
ill, are but the wise dealings and distributions 
of a Wisdom higher, and a Kindness greater, 
than our own. And I suppose that their mean- 
ing is that we should learn, by all the uncer- 
tainties of our life, even the smallest, how to 
be brave and steady and temperate and hope- 
ful, whatever comes, because we believe that 
behind it all there lies a purpose of good, and 
over it all there watches a providence of bless- 
ing. 

In the school of life many branches of knowl- 
edge are taught. But the only philosophy that 
amounts to anything, after all, is just the secret 
of making friends with our luck. 


32 


THE THRILLING MOMENT 


“/n angling, as in all other recreations into which excitement enters, we 
have to he on our guard, so that we can at any moment throw a weight of 
self-control into the scale against misfortune; and happily we can study 
to some purpose, both to increase our pleasure in success and to lessen 
our distress caused by what goes ill. It is not only in cases of great dis- 
asters, however, that the angler needs self-control. He is perpetually 
called upon to use it to withstand small exasperations — Sib Edward 
Grey: Fly-Fishing. 


THE THRILLING MOMENT 


Tj 1 VERY moment of life, I suppose, is more or 
less of a turning-point. Opportunities are 
swarming around us all the time, thicker than 
gnats at sundown. We walk through a cloud 
of chances, and if we were always conscious of 
them they would worry us almost to death. 

But happily our sense of uncertainty is soothed 
and cushioned by habit, so that we can live 
comfortably with it. Only now and then, by 
way of special excitement, it starts up wide 
awake. We perceive how delicately our for- 
tune is poised and balanced on the pivot of a 
single incident. We get a peep at the oscillat- 
ing needle, and, because we have happened to 
see it tremble, we call our experience a crisis. 

The meditative angler is not exempt from 
these sensational periods. There are times 
when all the uncertainty of his chosen pursuit 
seems to condense itself into one big chance, 
and stand out before him like a salmon on the 
top wave of a rapid. He sees that his luck 
hangs by a single strand, and he cannot tell 
35 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


whether it will hold or break. This is his 
thrilling moment, and he never forgets it. 

Mine came to me in the autumn of 1894, on 
the banks of the Unpronounceable River, in the 
Province of Quebec. It was the last day of the 
open season for ouananiche, and we had set 
our hearts on catching some good fish to take 
home with us. We walked up from the mouth 
of the river, four preposterously long and rough 
miles, to the famous fishing-pool, “Za place de 
peche a Boivin .” It was a glorious day for 
walking; the air was clear and crisp, and all 
the hills around us were glowing with the crim- 
son foliage of those little bushes which God 
created to make burned lands look beautiful. 
The trail ended in a precipitous gully, down 
which we scrambled with high hopes, and fish- 
ing-rods unbroken, only to find that the river 
was in a condition which made angling absurd 
if not impossible. 

There must have been a cloud-burst among 
the mountains, for the water was coming down 
in flood. The stream was bank-full, gurgling 
and eddying out among the bushes, and rush- 
ing over the shoal where the fish used to lie, in 
a brown torrent ten feet deep. Our last day 
with the land-locked salmon seemed destined 
to be a failure, and we must wait eight months 
36 


THE THRILLING MOMENT 


before we could have another. There were 
three of us in the disappointment, and we 
shared it according to our temperaments. 

Paul virtuously resolved not to give up while 
there was a chance left, and wandered down- 
stream to look for an eddy where he might pick 
up a small fish. Ferdinand, our guide, resigned 
himself without a sigh to the consolation of eat- 
ing blueberries, which he always did with great 
cheerfulness. But I, being more cast down 
than either of my comrades, sought out a con- 
venient seat among the rocks, and, adapting 
my anatomy as well as possible to the irregulari- 
ties of nature’s upholstery, pulled from my 
pocket An Amateur Angler’s Days in Dove Dale, 
and settled down to read myself into a Chris- 
tian frame of mind. 

Before beginning, my eyes roved sadly over 
the pool once more. It was but a casual glance. 
It lasted only for an instant. But in that for- 
tunate fragment of time I distinctly saw the 
broad tail of a big ouananiche rise and disappear 
in the swift water at the very head of the pool. 

Immediately the whole aspect of affairs was 
changed. Despondency vanished, and the river 
glittered with the beams of rising hope. 

Such is the absurd disposition of some anglers. 
They never see a fish without believing that 
37 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


they can catch him; but if they see no fish, they 
are inclined to think that the river is empty 
and the world hollow. 

I said nothing to my companions. It would 
have been unkind to disturb them with expec- 
tations which might never be realized. My 
immediate duty was to get within casting dis- 
tance of that salmon as soon as possible. 

The way along the shore of the pool was diffi- 
cult. The bank was very steep, and the rocks 
by the river’s edge were broken and gliddery. 
Presently I came to a sheer wall of stone, per- 
haps thirty feet high, rising directly from the 
deep water. 

There was a tiny ledge or crevice running part 
of the way across the face of this wall, and by 
this four-inch path I edged along, holding my 
rod in one hand, and clinging affectionately with 
the other to such clumps of grass and little 
bushes as I could find. There was one small 
huckleberry plant to which I had a particular 
attachment. It was fortunately a firm little 
bush, and as I held fast to it I remembered 
Tennyson’s poem which begins 

“Flower in the crannied wall” 

and reflected that if I should succeed in pluck- 
ing out this flower, “root and all,” it would 
38 


THE THRILLING MOMENT 

probably result in an even greater increase of 
knowledge than the poet contemplated. 

The ledge in the rock now came to an end. 
Rut below me in the pool there was a sunken 
reef; and on this reef a long log had caught, 
with one end sticking out of the water, within 
jumping distance. It was the only chance. 
To go back would have been dangerous. An 
angler with a large family dependent upon him 
for support has no right to incur unnecessary 
perils. 

Besides, the fish was waiting for me at the 
upper end of the pool ! 

So I jumped; landed on the end of the log; 
felt it settle slowly down; ran along it like a 
small boy on a seesaw, and leaped off into 
shallow water just as the log rolled from the 
ledge and lunged out into the stream. 

It went wallowing through the pool and down 
the rapid like a playful hippopotamus. I 
watched it with interest and congratulated my- 
self that I was no longer embarked upon it. 
On that craft a voyage down the Unpronounce- 
able River would have been short but far from 
merry. The “all ashore” bell was not rung 
soon enough. I just got off, with not half a 
second to spare. 

But now all was well, for I was within reach 
39 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


of the fish. A little scrambling over the rocks 
brought me to a point where I could easily cast 
over him. He was lying in a swift, smooth, 
narrow channel between two large stones. It 
was a snug resting-place, and no doubt he would 
remain there for some time. So I took out my 
fly-book and prepared to angle for him accord- 
ing to the approved rules of the art. 

Nothing is more foolish in sport than the 
habit of precipitation. And yet it is a fault to 
which I am singularly subject. As a boy, in 
Brooklyn, I never came in sight of the Capito- 
line Skating Pond, after a long ride in the horse- 
cars, without breaking into a run along the 
board walk, buckling on my skates in a furious 
hurry, and flinging myself impetuously upon 
the ice, as if I feared that it would melt away 
before I could reach it. Now this, I confess, 
is a grievous defect, which advancing years have 
not entirely cured; and I found it necessary to 
take myself firmly, as it were, by the mental 
coat-collar, and resolve not to spoil the chance 
of catching the only ouananiche in the Unpro- 
nounceable River by undue haste in fishing for 
him. 

I carefully tested a brand-new leader, and at- 
tached it to the line with great deliberation and 
the proper knot. Then I gave my whole mind 
40 


THE THRILLING MOMENT 

to the important question of a wise selection 
of flies. 

It is astonishing how much time and mental 
anxiety a man can spend on an apparently sim- 
ple question like this. When you are buying 
flies in a shop it seems as if you never had half 
enough. You keep on picking out a half- 
dozen of each new variety as fast as the enticing 
salesman shows them to you. You stroll 
through the streets of Montreal or Quebec and 
drop in at every fishing-tackle dealer’s to see 
whether you can find a few more good flies. 
Then, when you come to look over your collec- 
tion at the critical moment on the bank of a 
stream, it seems as if you had ten times too 
many. And, spite of all, the precise fly that 
you need is not there. 

You select a couple that you think fairly good, 
lay them down beside you in the grass, and go 
on looking through the book for something 
better. Failing to satisfy yourself, you turn to 
pick up those that you have laid out, and find 
that they have mysteriously vanished from the 
face of the earth. 

Then you struggle with naughty words and 
relapse into a condition of mental palsy. 

Precipitation is a fault. But deliberation, for 
a person of precipitate disposition, is a vice. 

41 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


The best thing to do in such a case is to 
adopt some abstract theory of action without 
delay, and put it into practice without hesitation. 
Then if you fail, you can throw the responsi- 
bility on the theory. 

Now, in regard to flies there are two theories. 
The old, conservative theory is, that on a bright 
day you should use a dark, dull fly, because it 
is less conspicuous. So I followed that theory 
first and put on a Great Dun and a Dark Mon- 
treal. I cast them delicately over the fish, but 
he would not look at them. 

Then I perverted myself to the new, radical 
theory which says that on a bright day you 
must use a light, gay fly, because it is more in 
harmony with the sky, and therefore less no- 
ticeable. Accordingly I put on a Professor and 
a Parmacheene Belle; but this combination of 
learning and beauty had no attraction for the 
ouananiche. 

Then I fell back on a theory of my own, to 
the effect that the ouananiche have an aver- 
sion to red, and prefer yellow and brown. So 
I tried various combinations of flies in which 
these colours predominated. 

Then I abandoned all theories and went 
straight through my book, trying something 
from every page, and winding up with that lure 
42 


THE THRILLING MOMENT 


which the guides consider infallible, — “a Jock 
o’ Scott that cost fifty cents at Quebec.” But 
it was all in vain. I was ready to despair. 

At this psychological moment I heard behind 
me a voice of hope, — the song of a grasshopper: 
not one of those fat-legged, green-winged im- 
beciles that feebly tumble in the summer fields, 
but a game grasshopper, — one of those thin- 
shanked, brown-winged fellows that leap like 
kangaroos, and fly like birds, and sing Kri-karee - 
haree-hri in their flight. 

It is not really a song, I know, but it sounds 
like one; and, if you had heard that Kri-karee 
carolling as I chased him over the rocks, you 
would have been sure that he was mocking me. 

I believed that he was the predestined lure 
for that ouananiche; but it was hard to per- 
suade him to fulfill his destiny. I slapped at 
him with my hat, but he was not there. I 
grasped at him on the bushes, and brought 
away “ nothing but leaves.” At last he made 
his way to the very edge of the water and poised 
himself on a stone, with his legs well tucked in 
for a long leap and a bold flight to the other side 
of the river. It was my final opportunity. I 
made a desperate grab at it and caught the 
grasshopper. 

My premonition proved to be correct. When 
43 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


that Kri-karee, invisibly attached to my line, 
went floating down the stream, the ouananiche 
was surprised. It was the fourteenth of Sep- 
tember, and he had supposed the grasshopper 
season was over. The unexpected temptation 
was too strong for him. He rose with a rush, 
and in an instant I was fast to the best ouana- 
niche of the year. 

But the situation was not without its em- 
barrassments. My rod weighed only four and 
a quarter ounces; the fish weighed between six 
and seven pounds. The water was furious and 
headstrong. I had only thirty yards of line 
and no landing-net. 

“Hola! Ferdinand /” I cried. “Apporte la 
nette , vite ! A beauty ! Hurry up !” 

I thought it must be an hour while he was 
making his way over the hill, through the under- 
brush, around the cliff. Again and again the 
fish ran out my line almost to the last turn. A 
dozen times he leaped from the water, shaking 
his silvery sides. Twice he tried to cut the 
leader across a sunken ledge. But at last he 
was played out, and came in quietly towards 
the point of the rock. At the same moment 
Ferdinand appeared with the net. 

Now, the use of the net is really the most 
difficult part of angling. And Ferdinand is the 
44 


THE THRILLING MOMENT 


best netsman in the Lake St. John country. He 
never makes the mistake of trying to scoop a 
fish in motion. He does not grope around with 
aimless, futile strokes as if he were feeling for 
something in the dark. He does not entangle 
the dropper-fly in the net and tear the tail-fly 
out of the fish’s mouth. He does not get 
excited. 

He quietly sinks the net in the water, and 
waits until he can see the fish distinctly, lying 
perfectly still and within reach. Then he makes 
a swift movement, like that of a mower swinging 
the scythe, takes the fish into the net head-first, 
and lands him without a slip. 

I felt sure that Ferdinand was going to do 
the trick in precisely this way with my ouana- 
niche. Just at the right instant he made one 
quick, steady swing of the arms, and — the head 
of the net broke clean off the handle and went 
floating away with the fish in it ! 

All seemed to be lost. But Ferdinand was 
equal to the occasion. He seized a long, crooked 
stick that lay in a pile of driftwood on the 
shore, sprang into the water up to his waist, 
caught the net as it drifted past, and dragged 
it to land, with the ultimate ouananiche, the 
prize of the season, still glittering through its 
meshes. 


45 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


This is the story of my most thrilling moment 
as an angler. 

But which was the moment of the deepest 
thrill? 

Was it when the huckleberry bush saved me 
from a watery grave, or when the log rolled 
under my feet and started down the river? 
Was it when the fish rose, or when the net broke, 
or when the long stick captured it? 

No, it was none of these. It was when the 
Kri-karee sat with his legs tucked under him 
on the brink of the stream. That was the turn- 
ing-point. The fortunes of the day depended 
on the comparative quickness of the reflex ac- 
tion of his neural ganglia and mine. That was 
the thrilling moment. 

I see it now. A crisis is really the common- 
est thing in the world. The reason why life 
sometimes seems dull to us is because we do 
not perceive the importance and the excitement 
of getting bait. 


46 


TALKABILITY 


A PRELUDE AND THEME WITH VARIATIONS 


“He praises a meditative life , and with evident sincerity : hut we feel that 
he liked nothing so well as good talk .” — James Russell Lowell: Walton. 


TALKABILITY 


I 


PRELUDE — ON AN OLD, FOOLISH MAXIM 

HE inventor of the familiar maxim that 



A “fishermen must not talk” is lost in the 
mists of antiquity, and well deserves his fate. 
For a more foolish rule, a conventionality more 
obscure and aimless in its tyranny, was never 
imposed upon an innocent and honourable oc- 
cupation, to diminish its pleasure and discount 
its profits. Why, in the name of all that is 
genial, should anglers go about their harmless 
sport in stealthy silence like conspirators, or sit 
together in a boat, dumb, glum, and penitential, 
like naughty schoolboys on the bench of dis- 
grace? ’Tis an Omorcan superstition; a rule 
without a reason; a venerable, idiotic fashion 
invented to repress lively spirits and put a pre- 
mium on stupidity. 

For my part, I incline rather to the opinion of 
the Neapolitan fishermen who maintain that a 
certain amount of noise, of certain kinds, is 


49 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


likely to improve the fishing, and who have a 
particular song, very sweet and charming, which 
they sing to draw the fishes around them. It is 
narrated, likewise, of the good St. Brandan, 
that on his notable voyage from Ireland in search 
of Paradise, he chanted the service for St. Peter’s 
day so pleasantly that a subaqueous audience of 
all sorts and sizes was attracted, insomuch that 
the other monks began to be afraid, and begged 
the abbot that he would sing a little lower, for 
they were not quite sure of the intention of the 
congregation. Of St. Anthony of Padua it is 
said that he even succeeded in persuading the 
fishes, in great multitudes, to listen to a sermon; 
and that when it was ended (it must be noted 
that it was both short and cheerful) they bowed 
their heads and moved their bodies up and down 
with every mark of fondness and approval of 
what the holy father had spoken. 

If we can believe this, surely we need not be 
incredulous of things which seem to be no less, 
but rather more, in harmony with the course of 
nature. Creatures who are sensible to the at- 
tractions of a sermon can hardly be indifferent 
to the charm of other kinds of discourse. I can 
easily imagine a company of grayling wishing to 
overhear a conversation between I. W. and his 
affectionate (but somewhat prodigal) son and 
50 


TALKABILITY 


follower, Charles Cotton; and surely every in- 
telligent salmon in Scotland might have been 
glad to hear Christopher North and the Ettrick 
Shepherd bandy jests and swap stories. As for 
trout, — was there one in Massachusetts that 
would not have been curious to listen to the 
intimate opinions of Daniel Webster as he loafed 
along the banks of the Marshpee, — or is there 
one in Pennsylvania to-day that might not be 
drawn with interest and delight to the feet of 
Joseph Jefferson, telling how he conceived and 
wrote Rip Van Winkle on the banks of a trout- 
stream ? 

Fishermen must be silent? On the contrary, 
it is far more likely that good talk may promote 
good fishing. 

All this, however, goes upon the assumption 
that fish can hear, in the proper sense of the 
word. And this, it must be confessed, is an as- 
sumption not yet fully verified. Experienced 
anglers and students of fishy ways are divided 
upon the question. It is beyond a doubt that 
all fishes, except the very lowest forms, have 
ears. But then so have all men; and yet we 
have the best authority for believing that there 
are many who “having ears, hear not.” 

The ears of fishes, for the most part, are in- 
closed in their skull, and have no outward open- 
51 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


in g. Water conveys sound, as every country 
boy knows who has tried the experiment of 
diving to the bottom of the swimming-hole and 
knocking two big stones together. But I doubt 
whether any country boy, engaged in this in- 
teresting scientific experiment, has heard the 
conversation of his friends on the bank who 
were engaged in hiding his clothes. 

There are many curious and more or less ven- 
erable stories to the effect that fishes may be 
trained to assemble at the ringing of a bell or 
the beating of a drum. Lucian, a writer of the 
second century, tells of a certain lake wherein 
many sacred fishes were kept, of which the 
largest had names given to them, and came 
when they were called. But Lucian was not a 
man of especially good reputation, and there is 
an air of improbability about his statement 
that the largest fishes came. This is not the 
custom of the largest fishes. 

In the present century there was a tale of an 
eel in a garden-well, in Scotland, which would 
come to be fed out of a spoon when the children 
called him by his singularly inappropriate name 
of Rob Roy. This seems a more likely story 
than Lucian’s; at all events it comes from a 
more orthodox atmosphere. But before giving 
it full credence, I should like to know whether 
52 


TALKABILITY 


the children, when they called “Rob Roy!” 
stood where the eel could see the spoon. 

On the other side of the question, we may 
quote Mr. Ronalds, also a Scotchman, and the 
learned author of The Fly-Fisher' s Entomology , 
who conducted a series of experiments which 
proved that even trout, the most fugacious of 
fish, are not in the least disturbed by the dis- 
charge of a gun, provided the flash is concealed. 
Mr. Henry P. Wells, the author of The American 
Salmon Angler , says that he has “never been 
able to make a sound in the air which seemed 
to produce the slightest effect upon trout in the 
water.” 

So the controversy on the hearing of fishes 
continues, and the conclusion remains open. 
Every man is at liberty to embrace that side 
which pleases him best. You may think that 
the finny tribes are as sensitive to sound as 
Fine Ear, in the German fairy-tale, who could 
hear the grass grow. Or you may hold the op- 
posite opinion, that they are 

“ Deafer than the blue-eyed cat .” 

But whichever theory you adopt, in practice, if 
you are a wise fisherman, you will steer a mid- 
dle course, between one thing which must be 
left undone and another thing which should be 
53 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


done. You will refrain from stamping on the 
bank, or knocking on the side of the boat, or 
dragging the anchor among the stones on the 
bottom; for when the water vibrates the fish 
are likely to vanish. But you will indulge as 
freely as you please in pleasant discourse with 
your comrade; for it is certain that fishing is 
never hindered, and may even be helped, in 
one way or another, by good talk. 

I should therefore have no hesitation in ad- 
vising any one to choose, for companionship on 
an angling expedition, long or short, a person 
who has the rare merit of being talkable. 

II 

THEME ON A SMALL, USEFUL VIRTUE 

“ Talkable” is not a new adjective. But it 
needs a new definition, and the complement of 
a corresponding noun. I would fain set down 
on paper some observations and reflections 
which may serve to make its meaning clear, and 
render due praise to that most excellent quality 
in man or woman, — especially in anglers, — the 
small but useful virtue of talkability. 

Robert Louis Stevenson uses the word “talk- 
able” in one of his essays to denote a certain 
distinction among the possible subjects of hu- 
54 


TALKABILITY 


man speech. There are some things, he says 
in effect, about which you can really talk; and 
there are other things about which you cannot 
properly talk at all, but only dispute, or ha- 
rangue, or prose, or moralize, or chatter. 

After mature consideration I have arrived at 
the opinion that this distinction among the 
themes of speech is an illusion. It does not 
exist. All subjects, “the foolish things of the 
world, and the weak things of the world, and 
base things of the world, yea, and things that 
are not,” may provide matter for good talk, if 
only the right people are engaged in the enter- 
prise. I know a man who can make a descrip- 
tion of the weather as entertaining as a tune 
on the violin; and even on the threadbare 
theme of the waywardness of domestic servants, 
I have heard a discreet woman play the most 
diverting and instructive variations. 

No, the quality of talkability does not mark a 
distinction among things; it denotes a difference 
among people. It is not an attribute unequally 
distributed among material objects and ab- 
stract ideas. It is a virtue which belongs to the 
mind and moral character of certain persons. 
It is a reciprocal human quality; active as well 
as passive; a power of bestowing and receiving. 

An amiable person is one who has a capacity 
55 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


for loving and being loved. An affable person 
is one who is ready to speak and to be spoken 
to, — as, for example, Milton’s “ affable arch- 
angel” Raphael; though it must be confessed 
that he laid the chief emphasis on the active 
side of his affability. A “ clubbable” person 
(to use a word which Dr. Samuel Johnson in- 
vented but did not put into his dictionary) is 
one who is fit for the familiar give and take 
of club-life. A talkable person, therefore, is 
one whose nature and disposition invite the 
easy interchange of thoughts and feelings, one 
in whose company it is a pleasure to talk or 
to be talked to. 

Now this good quality of talkability is to be 
distinguished, very strictly and inflexibly, from 
the bad quality which imitates it and often 
brings it into discredit. I mean the vice of 
talkativeness. That is a selfish, one-sided, in- 
harmonious affair, full of discomfort, and pro- 
ductive of most unchristian feelings. 

You may observe the operations of this vice 
not only in human beings, but also in birds. 
All the birds in the bush can make some kind 
of a noise; and most of them like to do it; and 
some of them like it a great deal and do it very 
much. But it is not always for edification, nor 
are the most vociferous and garrulous birds 
56 


TALKABILITY 


commonly the most pleasing. A parrot, for 
instance, in your neighbour’s back yard, in the 
summer time, when the windows are open, is 
not an aid to the development of Christian 
character. I knew a man who had to stay in 
the city all summer, and in the autumn was 
asked to describe the character and social 
standing of a new family that had moved into 
his neighbourhood. Were they “nice people,” 
well-bred, intelligent, respectable? “Well,” 
said he, “I don’t know what your standards 
are, and would prefer not to say anything libel- 
lous; but I’ll tell you in a word, — they are the 
kind of people that keep a parrot.” 

Then there is the English Sparrow ! What an 
insufferable chatterbox, what an incurable scold, 
what a voluble and tiresome blackguard is this 
little feathered cockney. There is not a sweet 
or pleasant word in all his vocabulary. 

I am convinced that he talks altogether of 
scandals and fights and street-sweepings. 

The kingdom of ornithology is divided into 
two departments, — real birds and English spar- 
rows. English sparrows are not real birds; 
they are little beasts. 

There was a church in Brooklyn which was 
once covered with a great and spreading vine, 
in which the sparrows built innumerable nests. 

57 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


These ungodly little birds kept up such a din 
that it was impossible to hear the service of the 
sanctuary. The faithful clergy strained their 
voices to the verge of ministerial sore throat, 
but the people had no peace in their devotions 
until the vine was cut down, and the Anglican 
intruders were evicted. 

A talkative person is like an English sparrow, 
— a bird that cannot sing, and will sing, and 
ought to be persuaded not to try to sing. But 
a talkable person has the gift that belongs to 
the wood thrush and the veery and the wren, 
the oriole and the white-throat and the rose- 
breasted grosbeak, the mockingbird and the 
robin (sometimes); and the brown thrasher; 
yes, the brown thrasher has it to perfection, if 
you can catch him alone, — the gift of being in- 
teresting, charming, delightful, in the most off- 
hand and various modes of utterance. 

Talkability is not at all the same thing as elo- 
quence. The eloquent man surprises, over- 
whelms, and sometimes paralyzes us by the dis- 
play of his power. Great orators are seldom 
good talkers. Oratory in exercise is masterful 
and jealous, and intolerant of all interruptions. 
Oratory in preparation is silent, self-centred, un- 
communicative. The painful truth of this re- 
mark may be seen in the row of countenances 
along the president’s table at a public banquet 
58 


TALKABILITY 


about nine o’clock in the evening. The bicycle- 
face seems unconstrained and merry by com- 
parison with the after-dinner-speech-face. The 
flow of table-talk is corked by the anxious con- 
ception of post-prandial oratory. 

Thackeray, in one of his Roundabout Papers , 
speaks of “the sin of tall-talking,” which, he 
says, “is the sin of schoolmasters, governesses, 
critics, sermoners, and instructors of young or 
old people.” But this is not in accord with my 
observation. I should say it was rather the sin 
of dilettanti who are ambitious of that high- 
stepping accomplishment which is called “con- 
versational ability.” 

This has usually, to my mind, something set 
and artificial about it, although in its most 
perfect form the art almost succeeds in conceal- 
ing itself. But, at all events, “conversation” 
is talk in evening dress, with perhaps a little 
powder and a touch of rouge. ’T is like one of 
those wise virgins who are said to look their 
best by lamplight. And doubtless this is an 
excellent thing, and not without its advantages. 
But for my part, commend me to one who loses 
nothing by the early morning illumination, — * 
one who brings all her attractions with her when 
she comes down to breakfast, — she is a very 
pleasant maid. 

Talk is that form of human speech which is 
59 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


exempt from all duties, foreign and domestic. 
It is the nearest thing in the world to thinking 
and feeling aloud. It is necessarily not for 
publication, — solely an evidence of good faith 
and mutual kindness. You tell me what you 
have seen and what you are thinking about, 
because you take it for granted that it will in- 
terest and entertain me; and you listen to my 
replies and the recital of my adventures and 
opinions, because you know I like to tell them, 
and because you find something in them, of one 
kind or another, that you care to hear. It is 
a nice game, with easy, simple rules, and end- 
less possibilities of variation. And if we go 
into it with the right spirit, and play it for love, 
without heavy stakes, the chances are that if 
we happen to be fairly talkable people we shall 
have one of the best things in the world, — a 
mighty good talk. 

What is there in this anxious, hide-bound, tire- 
some existence of ours, more restful and remun- 
erative? Montaigne says, “The use of it is 
more sweet than of any other action of life; 
and for that reason it is that, if I were com- 
pelled to choose, I should sooner, I think, con- 
sent to lose my sight than my hearing and 
speech.” The very aimlessness with which it 
proceeds, the serene disregard of all considera- 
60 


TALKABILITY 


tions of profit and propriety with which it fol- 
lows its wandering course, and brings up any- 
where or nowhere, to camp for the night, is one 
of its attractions. It is like a day’s fishing, not 
valuable chiefly for the fish you bring home, but 
for the pleasant country through which it leads 
you, and the state of personal well-being and 
health in which it leaves you, warmed, and 
cheered, and content with life and friendship. 

The order in which you set out upon a talk, 
the path which you pursue, the rules which 
you observe or disregard, make but little differ- 
ence in the end. You may follow the advice of 
Immanuel Kant if you like, and begin with the 
weather and the roads, and go on to current 
events, and wind up with history, art, and phil- 
osophy. Or you may reverse the order if you 
prefer, like that admirable talker Clarence King, 
who usually set sail on some highly abstract 
paradox, such as "Civilization is a nervous 
disease,” and landed in a tale of adventure in 
Mexico or the Rocky Mountains. Or you may 
follow the example of Edward Eggleston, who 
started in at the middle and worked out at 
either end, and sometimes at both. It makes 
no difference. If the thing is in you at all, you 
will find good matter for talk anywhere along 
the route. Hear what Montaigne says again: 

61 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


“In our discourse all subjects are alike to me; 
let there be neither weight nor depth, ’t is all 
one; there is yet grace and pertinence; all there 
is tinted with a mature and constant judgment, 
and mixed with goodness, freedom, gaiety, and 
friendship.” 

How close to the mark the old essayist sends 
his arrow ! He is right about the essential 
qualities of good talk. They are not merely 
intellectual. They are moral. Goodness of 
heart, freedom of spirit, gaiety of temper, and 
friendliness of disposition, — these are four fine 
things, and doubtless as acceptable to God as 
they are agreeable to men. The talkability 
which springs out of these qualities has its roots 
in a good soil. On such a plant one need not 
look for the poison berries of malign discourse, 
nor for the Dead Sea apples of frivolous mockery. 
But fair fruit will be there, pleasant to the sight 
and good for food, brought forth abundantly 
according to the season. 


62 


TALKABILITY 


III 

VARIATIONS — ON A PLEASANT PHRASE FROM 
MONTAIGNE 

Montaigne has given us our text, “Goodness, 
freedom, gaiety, and friendship,” — these are the 
conditions which produce talkability. And on 
this fourfold theme we may embroider a few 
variations, by way of exposition and enlarge- 
ment. 

Goodness is the first thing and the most need- 
ful. An ugly, envious, irritable disposition is 
not fitted for talk. The occasions for offence 
are too numerous, and the way into strife is too 
short and easy. A touch of good-natured com- 
bativeness, a fondness for brisk argument, a 
readiness to try a friendly bout with any comer, 
on any ground, is a decided advantage in a 
talker. It breaks up the offensive monotony 
of polite concurrence, and makes things lively. 
But quarrelsomeness is quite another affair, and 
very fatal. 

I am always a little uneasy in a discourse with 
Bellicosus Macduff. It is like playing golf on 
links liable to earthquakes. One never knows 
when the landscape will be thrown into con- 
vulsions. Macduff has a tendency to regard a 
63 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


difference of opinion as a personal insult. If he 
makes a bad stroke he seems to think that the 
way to retrieve it is to deliver the next one on 
the head of the other player. He does not 
tarry for the invitation to lay on; and before 
you know what has happened you find yourself 
in a position where you are obliged to cry, 
“Hold, enough!” and to be liberally damned 
without any bargain to that effect. This is 
discouraging, and calculated to make one wish 
that human intercourse might be put, as far 
as Macduff is concerned, upon the gold basis 
of silence. 

On the other hand, what a delight it was to 
talk with that old worthy. Doctor Howard 
Crosby! He was a fighting man for four or 
five generations back, Dutch on one side, Eng- 
lish on the other. Rut there was not one little 
drop of gall in his blood. His opinions were 
fixed to a degree; he loved to do battle for them; 
he never changed them — at least never in the 
course of the same discussion. He admired and 
respected a gallant adversary, and urged him 
on, with quips and puns and daring assaults 
and unqualified statements, to do his best. 
Easy victories were not to his taste. Even if he 
joined with you in laying out some common 
falsehood for burial, you might be sure that be- 
64 


TALKABILITY 


fore the affair was concluded there would be 
every prospect of what an Irishman would call 
“an elegant wake.” If you stood up against 
him on one of his favorite subjects of discus- 
sion you must be prepared for hot work. You 
would have to take off your coat. But when the 
combat was over he would be the man to help 
you on with it again; and you would walk home 
together arm in arm, through the twilight, smok- 
ing the pipe of peace. Talk like that does good. 
It quickens the beating of the heart, and leaves 
no scars upon it. 

But this manly spirit, which loves 

“ To drink delight of battle with its peers ” 

is a very different thing from that mean, bad, 
hostile temper which loves to inflict wounds and 
injuries just for the sake of showing power, and 
which is never so happy as when it is making 
some one wince. There are such people in the 
world, and sometimes their brilliancy tempts us 
to forget their malignancy. But to have much 
converse with them is as if we should make 
playmates of rattlesnakes for their grace of 
movement and swiftness of stroke. 

I knew a man once (I will not name him even 
with an initial) who was malignant to the core. 
Learned, industrious, accomplished, he kept all 
65 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


his talents at the service of a perfect genius for 
hatred. If you crossed his path but once, he 
would never cease to curse you. The grave 
might close over you, but he would revile your 
epitaph and mock at your memory. It was not 
even necessary that you should do anything to 
incur his enmity. It was enough to be upright 
and sincere and successful, to waken the wrath 
of this Shimei. Integrity was an offence to 
him, and excellence of any kind filled him with 
spleen. There was no good cause within his 
horizon that he did not give a bad word to, and 
no decent man in the community whom he did 
not try either to use or to abuse. To listen to 
him or to read what he had written was to learn 
to think a little worse of every one that he 
mentioned, and worst of all of him. He had 
the air of a gentleman, the vocabulary of a 
scholar, the style of a Junius, and the heart of 
a Thersites. 

Talk, in such company, is impossible. The 
sense of something evil, lurking beneath the 
play of wit, is like the knowledge that there are 
snakes in the grass. Every step must be taken 
with fear. But the real pleasure of a walk 
through the meadow comes from the feeling of 
security, of ease, of safe and happy abandon 
to the mood of the moment. This ungirdled 
66 


TALKABILITY 


and unguarded felicity in mutual discourse de- 
pends, after all, upon the assurance of real good- 
ness in your companion. I do not mean a stiff 
impeccability of conduct. Prudes and Phari- 
sees are poor comrades. I mean simply good- 
ness of heart, the wholesome, generous, kindly 
quality which thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in 
iniquity, hopeth all things, endureth all things, 
and wisheth well to all men. Where you feel 
this quality you can let yourself go, in the ease 
of hearty talk. 

Freedom is the second note that Montaigne 
strikes, and it is essential to the harmony of 
talking. Very careful, prudent, precise per- 
sons are seldom entertaining in familiar speech. 
They are like tennis players in too fine clothes. 
They think more of their costume than of the 
game. 

A mania for absolutely correct pronunciation 
is fatal. The people who are afflicted with this 
painful ailment are as anxious about their ut- 
terance as dyspeptics about their diet. They 
move through their sentences as delicately as 
Agag walked. Their little airs of nicety, their 
starched cadences and frilled phrases seem as 
if they had just been taken out of a literary 
bandbox. If perchance you happen to mis- 
place an accent, you shall see their eyebrows 
67 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


curl up like an interrogation mark, and they 
will ask you what authority you have for that 
pronunciation. As if, forsooth, a man could 
not talk without book-license! As if he must 
have a permit from some dusty lexicon before 
he can take a good word into his mouth and 
speak it out like the people with whom he has 
lived ! 

The truth is that the man who is very par- 
ticular not to commit himself, in pronunciation 
or otherwise, and talks as if his remarks were 
being taken down in shorthand, and shudders 
at the thought of making a mistake, will hardly 
be able to open your heart or let out the best 
that is in his own. 

Reserve and precision are a great protection to 
overrated reputations; but they are death to talk. 

In talk it is not correctness of grammar nor 
elegance of enunciation that charms us; it is 
spirit, verve , the sudden turn of humour, the 
keen, pungent taste of life. For this reason a 
touch of dialect, a flavour of brogue, is delight- 
ful. Any dialect is classic that has conveyed 
beautiful thoughts. Who that ever talked with 
the poet Tennyson, when he let himself go, over 
the pipes, would miss the savour of his broad- 
rolling Lincolnshire vowels, now heightening 
the humour, now deepening the pathos, of his 
68 


TALKABILITY 


genuine manly speech? There are many good 
stories lingering in the memories of those who 
knew Dr. James McCosh, the late president of 
Princeton University, — stories too good, I fear, 
to get into a biography; but the best of them, 
in print, would not have the snap and vigour 
of the poorest of them, in talk, with his own 
inimitable Scotch-Irish brogue to set it forth. 

A brogue is not a fault. It is a beauty, an 
heirloom, a distinction. A local accent is like 
a landed inheritance; it marks a man’s place in 
the world, tells where he comes from. Of course 
it is possible to have too much of it. A man 
does not need to carry the soil of his whole 
farm around with him on his boots. But, 
within limits, the accent of a native region is 
delightful. ’T is the flavour of heather in the 
grouse, the taste of wild herbs and evergreen- 
buds in the venison. I like the maple-sugar 
tang of the Vermonter’s sharp-edged speech; 
the round, full-waisted r’s of Pennsylvania and 
Ohio; the soft, indolent vowels of the South. 
One of the best talkers now living is an ex- 
schoolmaster from Virginia, Colonel Gordon 
McCabe. I once crossed the ocean with him 
on a stream of stories that reached from Liver- 
pool to New York. He did not talk in the least 
like a book. He talked like a Virginian. 

69 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


When Montaigne mentions gaiety as the third 
element of satisfying discourse, I fancy he does 
not mean mere fun, though that has its value 
at the right time and place. But there is an- 
other quality which is far more valuable and 
always fit. Indeed it underlies the best fun 
and makes it wholesome. It is cheerfulness, 
the temper which makes the best of things and 
gets the little drops of honey even out of thistle- 
blossoms. I think this is what Montaigne 
meant. Certainly it is what he had. 

Cheerfulness is the background of all good 
talk. A sense of humour is a means of grace. 
With it I have heard a pleasant soul make even 
that most perilous of all subjects, the descrip- 
tion of a long illness, entertaining. The various 
physicians moved through the recital as excel- 
lent comedians, and the medicines appeared like 
a succession of timely jests. 

There is no occasion upon which this precious 
element of talkability comes out stronger than 
when we are on a journey. Travel with a 
cheerless and easily discouraged companion is 
an unadulterated misery. But a cheerful com- 
rade is better than a waterproof coat and a foot- 
warmer. „ 

I remember riding once with my lady Gray- 
gown fifteen miles through a cold rainstorm, in 
70 


TALKABILITY 


an open buckboard, over the worst road in the 
world, from Lac a la Belle Riviere to the Meta- 
betchouan River. Such was the cheerfulness of 
her ejaculations (the only possible form of talk) 
that we arrived at our destination as warm and 
merry as if we had been sitting beside a roaring 
camp-fire. 

But after all, the very best thing in good 
talk, and the thing that helps it most, is friend- 
ship. How it dissolves the barriers that divide 
us, and loosens all constraint, and diffuses itself 
like some fine old cordial through all the veins 
of life — this feeling that we understand and 
trust each other, and wish each other heartily 
well ! Everything into which it really comes is 
good. It transforms letter-writing from a task 
into a pleasure. It makes music a thousand 
times more sweet. The people who play and 
sing not at us, but to us, — how delightful it is 
to listen to them ! Yes, there is a talkability 
that can express itself even without words. 
There is an exchange of thought and feeling 
which is happy alike in speech and in silence. 
It is quietness pervaded with friendship. 

Having come thus far in the exposition of 
Montaigne, I shall conclude with an opinion of 
71 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


my own, even though I cannot quote a sentence 
of his to back it. 

The one person of all the world in whom talk- 
ability is most desirable, and talkativeness least 
endurable, is a wife. 


72 


A WILD STRAWBERRY 


“Such is the story of the Boblink ; once spiritual, musical, admired, the 
joy of the meadows, and the favourite bird of spring; finally a gross little 
sensualist who expiates his sensuality in the larder. His story contains 
a moral, worthy the attention of all little birds and little boys ; warning 
them to keep to those refined and intellectual pursuits which raised him 
to so high a pitch of popularity during the early part of his career; but to 
eschew all tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought 
this mistaken little bird to an untimely end .” — Washington Irving: 
Wolfert’s Roost. 


A WILD STRAWBERRY 


fPHE Swiftwater brook was laughing softly to 
itself as it ran through a strip of hemlock 
forest on the edge of the Woodlings’ farm. 
Among the evergreen branches overhead the 
gayly-dressed warblers, — little friends of the 
forest, — were flitting to and fro, lisping their 
June songs of contented love: milder, slower, 
lazier notes than those in which they voiced 
the amorous raptures of May. Prince’s Pine 
and golden loose-strife and pink laurel and blue 
hare-bells and purple-fringed orchids, and a 
score of lovely flowers were all abloom. The 
late spring had hindered some; the sudden heats 
of early summer had hastened others; and now 
they seemed to come out all together, as if 
Nature had suddenly tilted up her cornucopia 
and poured forth her treasures in spendthrift 
joy. 

I lay on a mossy bank at the foot of a tree, 
filling my pipe after a frugal lunch, and think- 
ing how hard it would be to find in any quarter 
of the globe a place more fair and fragrant than 
this hidden vale among the Alleghany Moun- 
75 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


tains. The perfume of the flowers of the 
northern forest is more sweet and subtle than 
the heavy scent of tropical blossoms. No lily- 
field in Bermuda could give a fragrance half so 
magical as the fairy-like odour of these wood- 
land slopes, soft carpeted with the green of 
glossy vines above whose tiny leaves, in delicate 
profusion, 

“ The slight Linnsea hangs its twin-horn heads” 

Nor are there any birds in Africa, or among the 
Indian Isles, more exquisite in colour than these 
miniature warblers, showing their gold and green, 
their orange and black, their blue and white, 
against the dark background of the rhododen- 
dron thicket. 

But how seldom we put a cup of pleasure to 
our lips without a dash of bitters, a touch of 
faultfinding. My drop of discontent, that day, 
was the thought that the northern woodland, 
at least in June, yielded no fruit to match its 
beauty and its fragrance. 

There is good browsing among the leaves of 
the wood and the grasses of the meadow, as 
every well-instructed angler knows. The bright 
emerald tips that break from the hemlock and 
the balsam like verdant flames have a pleasant 
savour to the tongue. The leaves of the sassa- 
76 


A WILD STRAWBERRY 


fras are full of spice, and the bark of the black- 
birch twigs holds a fine cordial. Crinkle-root 
is spicy, but you must partake of it delicately, 
or it will bite your tongue. Spearmint and pep- 
permint never lose their charm for the palate 
that still remembers the delights of youth. 
Wild sorrel has an agreeable, sour, shivery fla- 
vour. Even the tender stalk of a young blade 
of grass is a thing that can be chewed by a per- 
son of childlike mind with much contentment. 

But, after all, these are only relishes. They 
whet the appetite more than they appease it. 
There should be something to eat, in the June 
woods, as perfect in its kind, as satisfying to 
the sense of taste, as the birds and the flowers 
are to the senses of sight and hearing and smell. 
Blueberries are good, but they are far away in 
August. Blackberries are luscious when fully 
ripe, but that will not be until September. 
Then the fishing will be over, and the angler’s 
hour of need will be past. The one thing that 
is lacking now beside this mountain stream is 
some fruit more luscious and dainty than grows 
in the tropics, to melt upon the lips and fill the 
mouth with pleasure. 

But that is what these cold northern woods 
will not offer. They are too reserved, too lofty, 
too puritanical to make provision for the grosser 
77 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

wants of humanity. They are not friendly to 
luxury. 

Just then, as I shifted my head to find a 
softer pillow of moss after this philosophic and 
immoral reflection, Nature gave me her silent 
answer. Three wild strawberries, nodding on 
their long stems, hung over my face. It was an 
invitation to taste and see that they were good. 

The berries were not the round and rosy ones 
of the meadow, but the long, slender, dark 
crimson ones of the forest. One, two, three; 
no more on that vine; but each one as it touched 
my lips was a drop of nectar and a crumb of 
ambrosia, a concentrated essence of all the 
pungent sweetness of the wildwood, sapid, pene- 
trating, and delicious. I tasted the odour of a 
hundred blossoms and the green shimmering of 
innumerable leaves and the sparkle of sifted 
sunbeams and the breath of highland breezes 
and the song of many birds and the murmur of 
flowing streams, — all in a wild strawberry. 

Do you remember, in The Compleat Angler , a 
remark which Izaak Walton quotes from a cer- 
tain “ Doctor Boteler” about strawberries? 
“Doubtless ” said that wise old man, “God could 
have made a better berry , but doubtless God never 

didr 


78 


A WILD STRAWBERRY 

Well, the wild strawberry is the one that God 
made. 

I think it would have been pleasant to know 
a man who could sum up his reflections upon 
the important question of berries in such a pithy 
saying as that which Walton repeats. His 
tongue must have been in close communication 
with his heart. He must have had a fair sense 
of that sprightly humour without which piety 
itself is often insipid. 

I have often tried to find out more about him, 
and some day I hope I shall. But up to the 
present, all that the books have told me of this 
obscure sage is that his name was William But- 
ler, and that he was an eminent physician, some- 
times called “the iEsculapius of his age.” He 
was born at Ipswich, in 1535, and educated at 
Clare Hall, Cambridge; in the neighbourhood 
of which town he appears to have spent the 
most of his life, in high repute as a practitioner 
of physic. He had the honour of doctoring 
King James the First after an accident on the 
hunting field, and must have proved himself a 
pleasant fellow, for the king looked him up at 
Cambridge the next year, and spent an hour in 
his lodgings. This wise physician also invented 
a medicinal beverage called “Doctor Butler’s 
Ale.” I do not quite like the sound of it, but 
79 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


perhaps it was better than its name. This 
much is sure, at all events: either it was really 
a harmless drink, or else the doctor must have 
confined its use entirely to his patients; for he 
lived to the ripe age of eighty-three years. 

Between the time when William Butler first 
needed the services of a physician, in 1535, and 
the time when he last prescribed for a patient, 
in 1618, there was plenty of trouble in England. 
Bloody Queen Mary sat on the throne; and 
there were all kinds of quarrels about religion 
and politics; and Catholics and Protestants were 
killing one another in the name of God. After 
that the red-haired Elizabeth, called the Virgin 
Queen, wore the crown, and waged triumphant 
war and tempestuous love. Then fat James of 
Scotland was made king of Great Britain; and 
Guy Fawkes tried to blow him up with gun- 
powder, and failed; and the king tried to blow 
out all the pipes in England with his Counter- 
blast Against Tobacco ; but he failed too. 
Somewhere about that time, early in the seven- 
teenth century, a very small event happened. 
A new berry was brought over from Virginia, 
— Fragraria Virginiana , — and then, amid wars 
and rumours of wars. Doctor Butler’s happiness 
was secure. That new berry was so much richer 
and sweeter and more generous than the familiar 
80 


A WILD STRAWBERRY 


Fragraria vesca of Europe, that it attracted the 
sincere interest of all persons of good taste. It 
inaugurated a new era in the history of the 
strawberry. The long lost masterpiece of Para- 
dise was restored to its true place in the affec- 
tions of man. 

Is there not a touch of merry contempt for all 
the vain controversies and conflicts of human- 
ity in the grateful ejaculation with which the 
old doctor greeted that peaceful, comforting 
gift of Providence? 

“From this time forward,” he seems to say, 
“the fates cannot beggar me, for I have eaten 
strawberries. With every Maytime that visits 
this distracted island, the white blossoms with 
hearts of gold will arrive. In every June the 
red drops of pleasant savour will hang among the 
scalloped leaves. The children of this world 
may wrangle and give one another wounds that 
even my good ale cannot cure. Nevertheless, 
the earth as God created it is a fair dwelling and 
full of comfort for all who have a quiet mind and 
a thankful heart. Doubtless God might have 
made a better world, but doubtless this is the 
world He made for us; and in it He planted the 
strawberry.” 

Fine old doctor ! Brave philosopher of cheer- 
fulness ! The Virginian berry should have been 
81 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


brought to England sooner, or you should have 
lived longer, at least to a hundred years, so that 
you might have welcomed a score of strawberry- 
seasons with gratitude and an epigram. 

Since that time a great change has passed 
over the fruit which Doctor Butler praised so 
well. That product of creative art which Divine 
wisdom did not choose to surpass, human in- 
dustry has laboured to improve. It has grown 
immensely in size and substance. The trav- 
eller from America who steams into Queens- 
town harbour in early summer is presented (for 
a consideration) with a cabbage-leaf full of 
pale-hued berries, sweet and juicy, any one of 
which would outbulk a dozen of those that used 
to grow in Virginia when Pocahontas was smitten 
with the charms of Captain John Smith. They 
are superb, those light-tinted Irish strawberries. 
And there are wonderful new varieties devel- 
oped in the gardens of New Jersey and Rhode 
Island, which compare with the ancient berries 
of the woods and meadows as Leviathan with 
a minnow. The huge crimson cushions hang 
among the plants so thick that they seem like 
bunches of fruit with a few leaves attached for 
ornament. You can satisfy your hunger in such 
a berry-patch in ten minutes, while out in the 
field you must pick for half an hour, and in the 
82 


A WILD STRAWBERRY 

forest thrice as long, before you can fill a small 
tin cup. 

Yet, after all, it is questionable whether men 
have really bettered God’s chef d'oeuvre in the 
berry line. They have enlarged it and made it 
more plentiful and more certain in its harvest. 
But sweeter, more fragrant, more poignant in 
its flavour? No. The wild berry still stands 
first in its subtle gusto. 

Size is not the measure of excellence. Per- 
fection lies in quality, not in quantity. Con- 
centration enhances pleasure, gives it a point so 
that it goes deeper. 

Is not a ten-inch trout better than a ten-foot 
sturgeon ? I would rather read a tiny essay by 
Charles Lamb than a five-hundred page libel 
on life by a modern British novelist who shall 
be nameless. Flavour is the priceless quality. 
Style is the thing that counts and is remembered, 
in literature, in art, and in berries. 

No Jocunda , nor Triumph , nor Victoria , nor 
any other high-titled fruit that ever took the 
first prize at an agricultural fair, is half so deli- 
cate and satisfying as the wild strawberry that 
dropped into my mouth, under the hemlock tree, 
beside the Swiftwater. 

A touch of surprise is essential to perfect 
sweetness. 


83 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


To get what you have been wishing for is 
pleasant; but to get what you have not been 
sure of, makes the pleasure tingle. A new door 
of happiness is opened when you go out to hunt 
for something and discover it with your own 
eyes. But there is an experience even better 
than that. When you have stupidly forgotten 
(or despondently foregone) to look about you 
for the unclaimed treasures and unearned bless- 
ings which are scattered along the by-ways of 
life, then, sometimes by a special mercy, a small 
sample of them is quietly laid before you so 
that you cannot help seeing it, and it brings 
you back to a sense of the joyful possibilities 
of living. 

How full of enjoyment is the search after wild 
things, — wild birds, wild flowers, wild honey, 
wild berries ! There was a country club on 
Storm King Mountain, above the Hudson River, 
where they used to celebrate a festival of flowers 
every spring. Men and women who had con- 
servatories of their own, full of rare plants and 
costly orchids, came together to admire the 
gathered blossoms of the woodlands and mead- 
ows. But the people who had the best of the 
entertainment were the boys and girls who 
wandered through the thickets and down the 
brooks, pushed their way into the tangled 
84 


A WILD STRAWBERRY 


copses and crept venturesomely across the 
swamps, to look for the flowers. Some of the 
seekers may have had a few gray hairs; but for 
that day at least they were all boys and girls. 
Nature was as young as ever, and they were all 
her children. Hand touched hand without a 
glove. The hidden blossoms of friendship un- 
folded. Laughter and merry shouts and snatches 
of half -forgotten song rose to the lips. Gay ad- 
venture sparkled in the air. School was out 
and nobody listened for the bell. It was just 
a day to live, and be natural, and take no 
thought for the morrow. 

There is great luck in this affair of looking for 
flowers. I do not see how any one who is prej- 
udiced against games of chance can consistently 
undertake it. 

For my own part, I approve of garden flowers 
because they are so orderly and so certain; but 
wild flowers I love, just because there is so 
much chance about them. Nature is all in 
favour of certainty in great laws and of uncer- 
tainty in small events. You cannot appoint 
the day and the place for her flower-shows. If 
you happen to drop in at the right moment she 
will give you a free admission. But even then 
it seems as if the table of beauty had been 
spread for the joy of a higher visitor, and in 
85 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

obedience to secret orders which you have not 
heard. 

Have you ever found the fringed gentian ? 

“Just before the snows , 

There came a purple creature 
That lavished all the hill; 

And summer hid her forehead, 

And mockery was still. 

The frosts were her condition: 

The Tyrian would not come 
Until the North evoked her , — 

‘ Creator , shall I bloom 

There are strange freaks of fortune in the 
finding of wild flowers, and curious coincidences 
which make us feel as if some one were playing 
friendly tricks on us. I remember reading, one 
evening in May, a passage in a good book called 
The Procession of the Flowers , in which Colonel 
Higginson describes the singular luck that a 
friend of his enjoyed, year after year, in find- 
ing the rare blossoms of the double rue-anemone. 
It seems that this man needed only to take a 
walk in the suburbs of any town, and he would 
come upon a bed of these flowers, without effort 
or design. I envied him his good fortune, for 
86 


A WILD STRAWBERRY 


I had never discovered even one of them. But 
the next morning, as I strolled out to fish the 
Swiftwater, down below Billy Lerns’s spring- 
house I found a green bank in the shadow of the 
wood all bespangled with tiny, trembling, two- 
fold stars, — double rue-anemones, for luck ! It 
was a favourable omen, and that day I came 
home with a creel full of trout. 

The theory that Adam lived out in the woods 
for some time before he was put into the gar- 
den of Eden “to dress it and to keep it” has an 
air of probability. How else shall we account 
for the arboreal instincts that cling to his pos- 
terity ? 

There is a wilding strain in our blood that all 
the civilization in the world will not eradicate. 
I never knew a real boy — or, for that matter, 
a girl worth knowing — who would not rather 
climb a tree, any day, than walk up a golden 
stairway. 

It is a touch of this instinct, I suppose, that 
makes it more delightful to fish in the most 
insignificant of free streams than in a carefully 
stocked and preserved pond, where the fish are 
brought up by hand and fed on minced liver. 
Such elaborate precautions to ensure good luck 
extract all the spice from the sport of angling. 
Casting the fly in such a pond, if you hooked a 
87 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


fish, you might expect to hear the keeper say, 
“Ah, that is Charles, we will play him and put 
him back, if you please, sir; for the master is 
very fond of him,” — or, “Now you have got 
hold of Edward; let us land him and keep him; 
he is three years old this month, and just ready 
to be eaten.” It would seem like taking trout 
out of cold storage. 

Who could find any pleasure in angling for 
the tame carp in the fish-pool of Fontainebleau? 
They gather at the marble steps, those venera- 
ble, courtly fish, to receive their rations; and 
there are veterans among them, in ancient 
livery, with fringes of green moss on their 
shoulders, who could tell you pretty tales of 
being fed by the white hands of maids of hon- 
our, or even of nibbling their crumbs of bread 
from the jewelled fingers of a princess. 

There is no sport in bringing pets to the 
table. It may be necessary sometimes; but 
the true sportsman would always prefer to leave 
the unpleasant task of execution to menial 
hands, while he goes out into the wild country 
to capture his game by his own skill, — if he has 
good luck. I would rather run some risk in 
this enterprise (even as the young Tobias did, 
when the voracious pike sprang at him from the 
waters of the Tigris, and would have devoured 
88 


A WILD STRAWBERRY 


him but for the friendly instruction of the pis- 
catory Angel, who taught Tobias how to land 
the monster), — I would far rather take any 
number of chances in my sport than have it 
domesticated to the point of dulness. 

The trim plantations of trees which are called 
“forests” in certain parts of Europe — scien- 
tifically pruned and tended, counted every year 
by uniformed foresters, and defended against all 
possible depredations — are admirable and use- 
ful in their way; but they lack the mystic en- 
chantment of the fragments of native wood- 
land which linger among the Adirondacks and 
the White Mountains, or the vast, shaggy, sylvan 
wildernesses which hide the lakes and rivers of 
Canada. These Laurentian Hills lie in No 
Man’s Land. Here you do not need to keep to 
the path, for there is none. You may make 
your own trail, whithersoever fancy leads you; 
and at night you may pitch your tent under any 
tree that looks friendly and firm. 

Here, if anywhere, you shall find Dryads, and 
Naiads, and Oreads. And if you chance to see 
one, by moonlight, combing her long hair be- 
side the glimmering waterfall, or slipping silently, 
with gleaming shoulders, through the grove of 
silver birches, you may call her by the name 
that pleases you best. She is all your own dis- 
89 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

covery. There is no social directory in the 
wilderness. 

One side of our nature, no doubt, finds its 
satisfaction in the regular, the proper, the con- 
ventional. But there is another side of our 
nature, underneath, that takes delight in the 
strange, the free, the spontaneous. We like to 
discover what we call a law of Nature, and 
make our calculations about it, and harness the 
force which lies behind it for our own purposes. 
But we taste a different kind of joy when an 
event occurs which nobody has foreseen or 
counted upon. It seems like an evidence that 
there is something in the world which is alive 
and mysterious and untrammelled. 

The weather-prophet tells us of an approach- 
ing storm. It comes according to the pro- 
gramme. We admire the accuracy of the pre- 
diction, and congratulate ourselves that we 
have such a good meteorological service. But 
when, perchance, a bright, crystalline piece of 
weather arrives instead of the foretold tempest, 
do we not feel a secret sepse of pleasure which 
goes beyond our mere comfort in the sunshine ? 
The whole affair is not as easy as a sum in sim- 
ple addition, after all, — at least not with our 
present knowledge. It is a good joke on the 
90 


A WILD STRAWBERRY 


Weather Bureau. “Aha, Old Probabilities!” 
we say, “you don’t know it all yet; there are 
still some chances to be taken !” 

Some day, I suppose, all things in the heavens 
above, and in the earth beneath, and in the 
hearts of the men and women who dwell be- 
tween, will be investigated and explained. We 
shall live a perfectly ordered life, with no acci- 
dents, happy or unhappy. Everybody will act 
according to rule, and there will be no dotted 
lines on the map of human existence, no regions 
marked “unexplored.” Perhaps that golden 
age of the machine will come, but you and I 
will hardly live to see it. And if that seems to 
you a matter for tears, you must do your own 
weeping, for I cannot find it in my heart to 
add a single drop of regret. 

The results of education and social discipline 
in humanity are fine. It is a good thing that 
we can count upon them. But at the same time 
let us rejoice in the play of native traits and in- 
dividual vagaries. Cultivated manners are ad- 
mirable, yet there is a sudden touch of inborn 
grace and courtesy that goes beyond them all. 
No array of accomplishments can rival the 
charm of an unsuspected gift of nature, brought 
suddenly to light. I once heard a peasant girl 
91 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


singing down the Traunthal, and the echo of 
her song outlives, in the hearing of my heart, 
all memories of the grand opera. 

The harvest of the gardens and the orchards, 
the result of prudent planting and patient cul- 
tivation, is full of satisfaction. We anticipate 
it in due season, and when it comes we fill our 
mouths and are grateful. But pray, kind Provi- 
dence, let me slip over the fence out of the gar- 
den now and then, to shake a nut-tree that 
grows untended in the wood. Give me liberty 
to put off my black coat for a day, and go 
a-fishing on a free stream, and find by chance 
a wild strawberry. 


LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 


“fife insisted that the love that was of real value in the world was n't in- 
teresting, and that the love that was interesting was n't always admirable . 
Love that happened to a person like the measles or fits, and was really of 
no particular credit to itself or its victims, was the sort that got into the 
books and was made much of; whereas the hind that was attained by the 
endeavour of true souls, and that had wear in it, and that made things go 
right instead of tangling them up, was too much like duty to make satis- 
factory reading for people of sentiment." — E. S. Martin: My Cousin 
Anthony. 


LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 


rpHE first day of spring is one thing, and the 
A first spring day is another. The difference 
between them is sometimes as great as a month. 

The first day of spring is due to arrive, if the 
calendar does not break down, about the twenty- 
first of March, when the earth turns the corner 
of Sun Alley and starts for Summer Street. 
But the first spring day is not on the time- 
table at all. It comes when it is ready, and in 
the latitude of New York this is usually not till 
after All Fools’ Day. 

About this time, — 

66 When chinks in April's windy dome 
Let through a day of June , 

And foot and thought incline to roam , 

And every sound 9 s a tune ,” — 

it is the habit of the angler who lives in town to 
prepare for the labours of the approaching sea- 
son by longer walks or bicycle-rides in the parks, 
or along the riverside, or in the somewhat de- 
moralized Edens of the suburbs. In the course 
of these vernal peregrinations and circumrota- 
95 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


tions, I observe that lovers of various kinds be- 
gin to occupy a notable place in the landscape. 

The burnished dove puts a livelier iris around 
his neck, and practises fantastic bows and 
amorous quicksteps along the verandah of the 
pigeon-house and on every convenient roof. 
The young male of the human species, less gifted 
in the matter of rainbows, does his best with a 
gay cravat, and turns the thoughts which cir- 
culate above it towards the securing or propiti- 
ating of a best girl. 

The objects of these more or less brilliant at- 
tentions, doves and girls, show a becoming reci- 
procity, and act in a way which leads us to in- 
fer (so far as inferences hold good in the mysteri- 
ous region of female conduct) that they are not 
seriously displeased. To a rightly tempered 
mind, pleasure is a pleasant sight. And the 
philosophic observer who could look upon this 
spring spectacle of the lovers with any but 
friendly feelings would be indeed what the great 
Dr. Samuel Johnson called “a person not to be 
envied.” 

Far be it from me to fall into such a desic- 
cated and supercilious mood. My small olive- 
branch of fancy will be withered, in truth, and 
ready to drop budless from the tree, when I 
cease to feel a mild delight in the billings and 
96 


LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 


cooings of the little birds that separate from 
the flocks to fly together in pairs, or in the un- 
instructive but mutually satisfactory converse 
which Strephon holds with Chloe while they 
dally along the primrose path. 

I am glad that even the stony and tumultu- 
ous city affords some opportunities for these 
amiable observations. In the month of April 
there is hardly a clump of shrubbery in the Cen- 
tral Park which will not serve as a trysting-place 
for yellow warblers and catbirds just home from 
their southern tours. At the same time, you 
shall see many a bench, designed for the ac- 
commodation of six persons, occupied at the 
sunset hour by only two, and apparently so 
much too small for them that they cannot avoid 
a little crowding. 

These are infallible signs. Taken in con- 
junction with the eruption of tops and marbles 
among the small boys, and the purchase of 
fishing-tackle and golf-clubs by the old boys, 
they certify us that the vernal season has ar- 
rived, not only in the celestial regions, but also 
in the heart of man. 

I have been reflecting of late upon the re- 
lation of lovers to the landscape, and question- 
ing whether art has given it quite the same place 
97 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


as that which belongs to it in nature. In fic- 
tion, for example, and in the drama, and in 
music, I have some vague misgivings that ro- 
mantic love has come to hold a more prominent 
and a more permanent position than it fills in 
real life. 

This is dangerous ground to venture upon, 
even in the most modest and deprecatory way. 
The man who expresses an opinion, or even a 
doubt, on this subject, contrary to the ruling 
traditions, will have a swarm of angry critics 
buzzing about him. He will be called a heretic, 
a heathen, a cold-blooded freak of nature. As 
for the woman who hesitates to subscribe all 
the thirty-nine articles of romantic love, if such 
a one dares to put her reluctance into words, 
she is certain to be accused either of unwomanly 
ambition or of feminine disappointment. 

Let us make haste, then, to get back for 
safety to the ornithological aspect of the sub- 
ject. Here there can be no penalties for heresy. 
And here I make bold to avow my conviction 
that the pairing season is not the only point of 
interest in the life of the birds; nor is the in- 
stinct by which they mate altogether and be- 
yond comparison the noblest passion that stirs 
their feathered breasts. 

’T is true, the time of mating is their prettiest 
98 


LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 


season; but it is very short. How little we 
should know of the drama of their airy life if 
we had eyes only for this brief scene ! Their 
finest qualities come out in the patient cares 
that protect the young in the nest, in the varied 
struggles for existence through the changing 
year, and in the incredible heroisms of the 
annual migrations. Herein is a parable. 

It may be observed further, without fear of 
rebuke, that the behaviour of the different 
kinds of birds during the prevalence of roman- 
tic love is not always equally above reproach. 
The courtship of English sparrows — blustering, 
noisy, vulgar — is a sight to offend the taste of 
every gentle on-looker. Some birds reiterate 
and vociferate their love-songs in a fashion that 
displays their inconsiderateness as well as their 
ignorance of music. This trait is most marked 
in domestic fowls. There was a guinea-cock, 
once, that chose to do his wooing close under 
the window of a farm-house where I was lodged. 
He had no regard for my hours of sleep or medi- 
tation. His amatory click-clack prevented the 
morning and wrecked the tranquillity of the 
evening. It was odious, brutal, — worse, it was 
absolutely thoughtless. Herein is another para- 
ble. 

Let us admit cheerfully that lovers have a 
99 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


place in the landscape and lend a charm to it. 
This does not mean that they are to take up 
all the room there is. Suppose, for example, 
that a pair of them, on Goat Island, put them- 
selves in such a position as to completely block 
out your view of Niagara. You cannot regard 
them with gratitude. They even become a little 
tedious. Or suppose that you are visiting at a 
country-house, and you find that you must not 
enjoy the moonlight on the verandah because 
Augustus and Amanda are murmuring in one 
corner, and that you must not go into the gar- 
den because Louis and Lizzie are there, and 
that you cannot have a sail on the lake because 
Richard and Rebecca have taken the boat. 

Of course, unless you happen to be a selfish 
old curmudgeon, you rejoice, by sympathy, in 
the happiness of these estimable young people. 
But you fail to see why it should cover so much 
ground. 

Why should they not pool their interests, and 
all go out in the boat, or all walk in the garden, 
or all sit on the verandah? Then there would 
be room for somebody else about the place. 

In old times you could rely upon lovers for 
retirement. But nowadays their role seems to 
be a bold ostentation of their condition. They 
rely upon other people to do the timid, shrink- 
100 


LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 


in g part. Society, in America, is arranged prin- 
cipally for their convenience; and whatever por- 
tion of the landscape strikes their fancy, they 
preempt and occupy. All this goes upon the 
presumption that romantic love is really the 
only important interest in life. y- 

This train of thought was illuminated, the 
other night, by an incident which befell me at a 
party. It was an assembly of men, drawn to- 
gether by their common devotion to the sport 
of canoeing. There were only three or four of 
the gentler sex present (as honorary members), 
and only one of whom it could be suspected that 
she was at that time a victim or an object of the 
tender passion. In the course of the evening, 
by way of diversion to our disputations on keels 
and centreboards, canvas and birch-bark, cedar- 
wood and bass-wood, paddles and steering-gear, 
a fine young Apollo, with a big, manly voice, 
sang us a few songs. But he did not chant the 
joys of weathering a sudden squall, or running a 
rapid feather-white with foam, or floating down 
a long, quiet, elm-bowered river. Not he ! His 
songs were full of sighs and yearnings, languid 
lips and sheep’s-eyes. His powerful voice in- 
formed us that crowns of thorns seemed like 
garlands of roses, and kisses were as sweet as 
samples of heaven, and various other curious 
101 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


sensations were experienced; and at the end of 
every stanza the reason was stated, in tones of 
thunder — 

“Because 1 love you , dear ” 

Even if true, it seemed inappropriate. How 
foolish the average audience in a drawing-room 
looks while it is listening to passionate love- 
ditties ! And yet I suppose the singer chose 
these songs, not from any malice aforethought, 
but simply because songs of this kind are so 
abundant that it is next to impossible to find 
anything else in the shops. 

In regard to novels, the situation is almost as 
discouraging. Ten love-stories are printed to 
one of any other kind. We have a standing in- 
vitation to consider the tribulations and diffi- 
culties of some young man or young woman in 
finding a mate. It must be admitted that the 
subject has its capabilities of interest. Nature 
has her uses for the romantic lover, and she 
gives him an excellent part to play in the drama 
of life. But is this tantamount to saying that 
his interest is perennial and all-absorbing, and 
that his role on the stage is the only one that is 
significant and noteworthy? 

Life is much too large to be expressed in the 
terms of a single passion. Friendship, patri- 
102 


LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 


otism, parental tenderness, filial devotion, the 
ardour of adventure, the thirst for knowledge, 
the ecstasy of religion, — these all have their 
dwelling in the heart of man. They mould 
character. They control conduct. They are 
stars of destiny shining in the inner firmament. 
And if art would truly hold the mirror up to 
nature, it must reflect these greater and lesser 
lights that rule the day and the night. 

How many of the plays that divert and mis- 
inform the modern theatre-goer turn on the 
pivot of a love-affair, not always pure, but gen- 
erally simple ! And how many of those that 
are imported (or imitated) from France proceed 
upon the theory that the Seventh is the only 
Commandment, and that the principal attrac- 
tion of life lies in the opportunity of breaking 
it ! The matinee-girl is not likely to have a 
very luminous or truthful idea of existence 
floating around in her pretty little head. 

But, after all, the great plays, those that take 
the deepest hold upon the heart, like Hamlet 
and King Lear , Macbeth and Othello, are not 
love-plays. And the most charming comedies, 
like The Winter’s Tale , and The Rivals , and Rip 
Van Winkle, are chiefly memorable for other 
things than love-scenes. 

Even in novels, love shows at its best when it 
103 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


does not absorb the whole plot. Lorna Doone 
is a lovers’ story, but there is a blessed minimum 
of spooning in it, and always enough of working 
and fighting to keep the air clear and fresh. 
The Heart of Midlothian , and Hypatia , and Rom- 
ola, and The Cloister and the Hearth , and John 
Inglesant, and The Three Musketeers , and Notre 
Dame , and Peace and War, and Quo Vadis , — 
these are great novels because they are much 
more than tales of romantic love. As for 
Henry Esmond, (which seems to me the best of 
all,) certainly “love at first sight” does not 
play the finest role in that book. 

There are good stories of our own day — pa- 
thetic, humourous, entertaining, powerful — in 
which the element of romantic love is altogether 
subordinate, or even imperceptible. The Rise 
of Silas Lapham does not owe its deep interest 
to the engagement of the very charming young 
people who enliven it. Madame Delphine and 
Ole 9 Stracted are perfect stories of their kind. 
I would not barter The Jungle Books for a hun- 
dred of The Brushwood Boy . 

The truth is that love, considered merely as 
the preference of one person for another of the 
opposite sex, is not “the greatest thing in the 
world.” It becomes great only when it leads 
104 


LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 

on, as it often does, to heroism and self-sacrifice 
and fidelity. Its chief value for art (the in- 
terpreter) lies not in itself, but in its quickening 
relation to the other elements of life. It must 
be seen and shown in its due proportion, and in 
harmony with the broader landscape. 

Do you believe that in all the world there is 
only one woman specially created for each man, 
and that the order of the universe will be hope- 
lessly askew unless these two needles find each 
other in the haystack ? You believe it for your- 
self, perhaps; but do you believe it for Tom 
Johnson? You remember what a terrific dis- 
turbance he made in the summer of 189-, at 
Bar Harbor, about Ellinor Brown, and how he 
ran away with her in September. You have 
also seen them together (occasionally) at Lenox 
and Newport, since their marriage. Are you 
honestly of the opinion that if Tom had not 
married Ellinor, these two young lives would 
have been a total wreck? 

Adam Smith, in his book on The Moral Sen- 
timents , goes so far as to say that “love is not 
interesting to the observer because it is an 
affection of the imagination , into which it is 
difficult for a third party to enter.” Something 
of the same kind occurred to me in regard to 
105 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


Tom and Ellinor. Yet I would not have pre- 
sumed to suggest this thought to either of them. 
Nor would I have quoted in their hearing the 
melancholy and frigid prediction of Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, to the effect that they would 
some day discover “that all which at first drew 
them together — those once sacred features, that 
magical play of charm — was deciduous.” f- 

Deciduous , indeed ? Cold, unpleasant, botan- 
ical word ! Rather would I prognosticate for 
the lovers something perennial, 

“A sober certainty of waking bliss” 

to survive the evanescence of love’s young 
dream. Ellinor should turn out to be a woman 
like the Lady Elizabeth Hastings, of whom 
Richard Steele wrote that “to love her was a 
liberal education.” Tom should prove that he 
had in him the lasting stuff of a true man and 
a hero. Then it would make little difference 
whether their conjunction had been eternally 
prescribed in the book of fate or not. It would 
be evidently a fit match, made on earth and 
illustrative of heaven. 

But even in the making of such a match as 
this, the various stages of attraction, infatua- 
tion, and appropriation should not be displayed 
106 


LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 


too prominently before the world, nor treated 
as events of overwhelming importance and en- 
during moment. I would not counsel Tom and 
Ellinor, in the mid-summer of their engagement, 
to have their photographs taken together in 
affectionate attitudes. 

The pictures of an imaginary kind which deal 
with the subject of romantic love are, almost 
without exception, fatuous and futile. The in- 
anely amatory, with their languishing eyes, 
weary us. The endlessly osculatory, with their 
protracted salutations, are sickening. Even 
when an air of sentimental propriety is thrown 
about them by some such title as “Wedded” or 
“The Honeymoon,” they fatigue us. For the 
most part, they remind me of the remark which 
the Commodore made upon a certain painting 
of Jupiter and Io which used to hang in the 
writing-room of the Contrary Club, but has 
now been retired to the upper stairway. 

“Sir,” said that gently piercing critic, “that 
picture is equally unsatisfactory to the artist, 
to the moralist, and to the voluptuary.” 

Nevertheless, having made a clean breast of 
my misgivings and reservations on the subject 
of lovers and landscape, I will now confess 
107 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


that the whole of my doubts do not weigh much 
against my unreasoned faith in romantic love. 
At heart I am no infidel, but a most obstinate 
believer and devotee. My seasons of skepti- 
cism are transient. They are connected with a 
torpid liver and aggravated by confinement to 
a sedentary life and enforced abstinence from 
angling. Out-of-doors, I return to a saner and 
happier frame of mind. 

As my wheel rolls along the Riverside Drive 
in the golden glow of the sunset, I rejoice that 
the episode of Charles Henry and Matilda Jane 
has not been omitted from the view. This vast 
and populous city, with all its passing show of 
life, would be little better than a waste, howling 
wilderness if we could not catch a glimpse, now 
and then, of young people falling in love in the 
good old-fashioned way. Even on a trout- 
stream, I have seen nothing prettier than the 
sight upon which I once came suddenly as I 
was fishing down the Neversink. 

A boy was kneeling beside the brook, and a 
girl was giving him a drink of water out of her 
rosy hands. They stared with wonder and 
compassion at the wet and solitary angler, 
wading down the stream, as if he were some 
kind of a mild lunatic. But as I glanced dis- 
creetly at their small tableau, I was not uncon- 
108 


LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE 


scious of the new joy that came into the land- 
scape with the presence of 

“ A lover and his lass." 

I knew how sweet the water tasted from that 
kind of a cup. I also have lived in Arcadia, 
and have not forgotten the way back. 


109 




































































































































































































































































































































































































































* 

































































A FATAL SUCCESS 


“What surprises me in her behaviour,” said he, “is its thoroughness. 
Woman seldom does things by halves, but often by doubles ” — Solomon 
Singlewitz: The Life of Adam. 


A FATAL SUCCESS 


OEEKMAN DE PEYSTER was probably 
the most passionate and triumphant fisher- 
man in the Petrine Club. He angled with the 
same dash and confidence that he threw into 
his operations in the stock-market. He was 
sure to be the first man to get his flies on the 
water at the opening of the season. And when 
we came together for our fall meeting, to com- 
pare notes of our wanderings on various streams 
and make up the fish-stories for the year, Beek- 
man was almost always “high hook.” We ex- 
pected, as a matter of course, to hear that he 
had taken the most and the largest fish. 

It was so with everything that he undertook. 
He was a masterful man. If there was an un- 
usually large trout in a river, Beekman knew 
about it before any one else, and got there first, 
and came home with the fish. It did not make 
him unduly proud, because there was nothing 
uncommon about it. It was his habit to suc- 
ceed, and all the rest of us were hardened to it. 

When he married Cornelia Cochrane, we 
were consoled for our partial loss by the appar- 
113 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


ent fitness and brilliancy of the match. If 
Beekman was a masterful man, Cornelia was 
certainly what you might call a mistressful 
woman. She had been the head of her house 
since she was eighteen years old. She carried 
her good looks like the family plate; and when 
she came into the breakfast-room and said 
good-morning, it was with an air as if she pre- 
sented every one with a check for a thousand 
dollars. Her tastes were accepted as judgments, 
and her preferences had the force of laws. 
Wherever she wanted to go in the summer- 
time, there the finger of household destiny 
pointed. At Newport, at Bar Harbor, at Lenox, 
at Southampton, she made a record. When 
she was joined in holy wedlock to Beekman 
De Peyster, her father and mother heaved a 
sigh of satisfaction, and settled down for a quiet 
vacation in Cherry Valley. 

It was in the second summer after the wed- 
ding that Beekman admitted to a few of his 
ancient Petrine cronies, in moments of confi- 
dence (unjustifiable, but natural), that his wife 
had one fault. 

“It is not exactly a fault,” he said, “not a 
positive fault, you know. It is just a kind of a 
defect, due to her education, of course. In 
everything else she’s magnificent. But she 
114 


A FATAL SUCCESS 


does n’t care for fishing. She says it ’s stupid, 
— can’t see why any one should like the woods, 
— calls camping out the lunatic’s diversion. 
It ’s rather awkward for a man with my habits 
to have his wife take such a view. But it can 
be changed by training. I intend to educate 
her and convert her. I shall make an angler of 
her yet.” 

And so he did. 

The new education was begun in the Adiron- 
dacks, and the first lesson was given at Paul 
Smith’s. It was a complete failure. 

Beekman persuaded her to come out with 
him for a day on Meacham River, and promised 
to convince her of the charm of angling. She 
wore a new sporting-gown, fawn-colour and vi- 
olet, with a picture-hat, very taking. But the 
Meacham River trout was shy that day; not 
even Beekman could induce him to rise to the 
fly. What the trout lacked in confidence the 
mosquitoes more than made up. Mrs. De Pey- 
ster came home much sunburned, and expressed 
a highly unfavourable opinion of fishing as an 
amusement and of Meacham River as a resort. 

“The nice people don’t come to the Adiron- 
dacks to fish,” said she; “they come to talk 
about the fishing twenty years ago. Besides, 
what do you want to catch that trout for? If 
115 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


you do, the other men will say you bought it, 
and the hotel will have to put in a new one for 
the rest of the season.” 

The following year Beekman tried Moose- 
head Lake. Here he found an atmosphere more 
favourable to his plan of education. There were 
a good many people who really fished, and short 
expeditions in the woods were quite fashiona- 
ble. Cornelia had a camping-costume of the 
most approved style made by Dewlap on Fifth 
Avenue, — pearl-gray with linings of rose-silk, 
— and consented to go with her husband on a 
trip up Moose River. They pitched their tent 
the first evening at the mouth of Misery Stream, 
and a storm came on. The rain sifted through 
the canvas in a fine spray, and Mrs. De Peyster 
sat up all night in a waterproof cloak, holding 
an umbrella. The next day they were back at 
the hotel in time for lunch. 

“It was horrid,” she told her most intimate 
friend, “perfectly horrid. The idea of sleeping 
in a shower-bath, and eating your breakfast 
from a tin plate, just for sake of catching a few 
silly fish ! Why not send your guides out to 
get them for you?” 

But, in spite of this profession of obstinate 
heresy, Beekman observed with secret joy that 
there were signs, before the end of the season, 
116 


A FATAL SUCCESS 


that Cornelia was drifting a little, a very little 
but still perceptibly, in the direction of a change 
of heart. She began to take an interest, as the 
big trout came along in September, in the re- 
ports of the catches made by the different 
anglers. She would saunter out with the other 
people to the corner of the porch to see the fish 
weighed and spread out on the grass. Several 
times she went with Beekman in the canoe to 
Hardscrabble Point, and showed distinct evi- 
dences of pleasure when he caught large trout. 
The last day of the season, when he returned 
from a successful expedition to Roach River 
and Lily Bay, she inquired with some partic- 
ularity about the results of his sport; and in 
the evening, as the company sat before the great 
open fire in the hall of the hotel, she was heard 
to use this information with considerable skill 
in putting down Mrs. Minot Peabody of Bos- 
ton, who was recounting the details of her 
husband’s catch at Spencer Pond. Cornelia 
was not a person to be contented with the back 
seat, even in fish-stories. 

When Beekman observed these indications 
he was much encouraged, and resolved to push 
his educational experiment briskly forward to 
his customary goal of success. 

“Some things can be done, as well as others,” 
117 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


he said in his masterful way, as three of us were 
walking home together after the autumnal 
dinner of the Petrine Club, which he always 
attended as a graduate member. “A real fish- 
erman never gives up. I told you I’d make 
an angler out of my wife; and so I will. It has 
been rather difficult. She is ‘dour’ in rising. 
But she’s beginning to take notice of the fly 
now. Give me another season, and I’ll have 
her landed.” 

Good old Beekman ! Little did he think — 
But I must not interrupt the story with moral 
reflections. 

The preparations that he made for his final 
effort at conversion were thorough and prudent. 
He had a private interview with Dewlap in re- 
gard to the construction of a practical fishing- 
costume for a lady, which resulted in something 
more reasonable and workmanlike than had 
ever been turned out by that famous artist. 
He ordered from Hook & Catchett a lady’s 
angling-outfit of the most enticing description, 
— a split-bamboo rod, light as a girl’s wish, and 
strong as a matron’s will; an oxidized silver reel, 
with a monogram on one side, and a sapphire 
set in the handle for good luck; a book of flies, 
of all sizes and colours, with the correct names 
inscribed in gilt letters on each page. He sur- 
118 


A FATAL SUCCESS 


rounded his favourite sport with an aureole of 
elegance and beauty. And then he took Cor- 
nelia in September to the Upper Dam at Range- 
ley. 

She went reluctant. She arrived disgusted. 
She stayed incredulous. She returned — Wait 
a bit, and you shall hear how she returned. 

The Upper Dam at Rangeley is the place, of 
all others in the world, where the lunacy of 
angling may be seen in its incurable stage. 
There is a cosy little inn, called a camp, at the 
foot of a big lake. In front of the inn is a huge 
dam of gray stone, over which the river plunges 
into a great oval pool, where the trout assem- 
ble in the early fall to perpetuate their race. 
From the tenth of September to the thirtieth, 
there is not an hour of the day or night when 
there are no boats floating on that pool, and no 
anglers trailing the fly across its waters. Be- 
fore the late fishermen are ready to come in at 
midnight, the early fishermen may be seen 
creeping down to the shore with lanterns in 
order to begin before cock-crow. The number 
of fish taken is not large, — perhaps five or six 
for the whole company on an average day, — 
but the size is sometimes enormous, — nothing 
under three pounds is counted, — and they per- 
vade thought and conversation at the Upper 
119 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


Dam to the exclusion of every other subject. 
There is no driving, no dancing, no golf, no 
tennis. There is nothing to do but fish or 
die. 

At first, Cornelia thought she would choose 
the latter alternative. But a remark of that 
skilful and morose old angler, McTurk, which 
she overheard on the verandah after supper, 
changed her mind. 

“ Women have no sporting instinct,” said he. 
“They only fish because they see men doing it. 
They are imitative animals.” 

That same night she told Beekman, in the 
subdued tone which the architectural construc- 
tion of the house imposes upon all confidential 
communications in the bedrooms, but with 
resolution in every accent, that she proposed 
to go fishing with him on the morrow. 

“But not on that pool, right in front of the 
house, you understand. There must be some 
other place, out on the lake, where we can fish 
for three or four days, until I get the trick of 
this wobbly rod. Then I’ll show that old bear, 
McTurk, what kind of an animal woman is.” 

Beekman was simply delighted. Five days 
of diligent practice at the mouth of Mill Brook 
brought his pupil to the point where he pro- 
nounced her safe. 


120 


A FATAL SUCCESS 


“Of course/’ he said patronizingly, “you 
have n’t learned all about it yet. That will 
take years. But you can get your fly out 
thirty feet, and you can keep the tip of your 
rod up. If you do that, the trout will hook 
himself, in rapid water, eight times out of ten. 
For playing him, if you follow my directions, 
you ’ll be all right. We will try the pool to- 
night, and hope for a medium-sized fish.” 

Cornelia said nothing, but smiled and nodded. 
She had her own thoughts. 

At about nine o’clock Saturday night, they 
anchored their boat on the edge of the shoal 
where the big eddy swings around, extinguished 
the lantern and began to fish. Beekman sat in 
the bow of the boat, with his rod over the left 
side; Cornelia in the stern, with her rod over the 
right side. The night was cloudy and very 
black. Each of them had put on the largest 
possible fly, one a “Bee-Pond” and the other a 
“ Dragon ; ” but even these were invisible. They 
measured out the right length of line, and let 
the flies drift back until they hung over the 
shoal, in the curly water where the two currents 
meet. 

There were three other boats to the left of 
them. McTurk was their only neighbour in 
the darkness on the right. Once they heard 

m 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


him swearing softly to himself, and knew that 
he had hooked and lost a fish. 

Away down at the tail of the pool, dimly 
visible through the gloom, the furtive fisher- 
man, Parsons, had anchored his boat. No noise 
ever came from that craft. If he wished to 
change his position, he did not pull up the 
anchor and let it down again with a bump. 
He simply lengthened or shortened his anchor 
rope. There was no click of the reel when he 
played a fish. He drew in and paid out the line 
through the rings by hand, without a sound. 
What he thought when a fish got away, no one 
knew, for he never said it. He concealed his 
angling as if it had been a conspiracy. Twice 
that night they heard a faint splash in the water 
near his boat, and twice they saw him put his 
arm over the side in the darkness and bring it 
back again very quietly. 

“That ’s the second fish for Parsons,” whis- 
pered Beekman, “what a secretive old Fortu- 
natus he is ! He knows more about fishing than 
any man on the pool, and talks less.” 

Cornelia did not answer. Her thoughts were 
all on the tip of her own rod. About eleven 
o’clock a fine, drizzling rain set in. The fishing 
was very slack. All the other boats gave it 
up in despair; but Cornelia said she wanted to 
122 


A FATAL SUCCESS 


stay out a little longer, they might as well 
finish up the week. 

At precisely fifty minutes past eleven, Beek- 
man reeled up his line, and remarked with firm- 
ness that the holy Sabbath day was almost at 
hand and they ought to go in. 

“Not till I ’ve landed this trout,” said Cor- 
nelia. 

“What? A trout ! Have you got one?” 

“Certainly; I ? ve had him on for at least fif- 
teen minutes. I ’m playing him Mr. Parsons’ 
way. You might as well light the lantern and 
get the net ready; he ’s coming in towards the 
boat now.” 

Beekman broke three matches before he made 
the lantern burn; and when he held it up over 
the gunwale, there was the trout sure enough, 
gleaming ghostly pale in the dark water, close 
to the boat, and quite tired out. He slipped the 
net over the fish and drew it in, — a monster. 

“I ’ll carry that trout, if you please,” said 
Cornelia, as they stepped out of the boat; and 
she walked into the camp, on the last stroke of 
midnight, with the fish in her hand, and quietly 
asked for the steelyard. 

Eight pounds and fourteen ounces, — that was 
the weight. Everybody was amazed. It was 
the “best fish” of the year. Cornelia showed 

ns 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


no sign of exultation, until just as John was 
carrying the trout to the ice-house. Then she 
flashed out:— 

“ Quite a fair imitation, Mr. McTurk, — isn’t 
it?” 

Now McTurk’s best record for the last fifteen 
years was seven pounds and twelve ounces. 

So far as McTurk is concerned, this is the 
end of the story. But not for the De Peysters. 
I wish it were. Beekman went to sleep that 
night with a contented spirit. He felt that his 
experiment in education had been a success. 
He had made his wife an angler. 

He had indeed, and to an extent which he 
little suspected. That Upper Dam trout was 
to her like the first taste of blood to the tiger. 
It seemed to change, at once, not so much her 
character as the direction of her vital energy. 
She yielded to the lunacy of angling, not by 
slow degrees, (as first a transient delusion, then 
a fixed idea, then a chronic infirmity, finally a 
mild insanity,) but by a sudden plunge into the 
most violent mania. So far from being ready 
to die at Upper Dam, her desire now was to 
live there — and to live solely for the sake of 
fishing — as long as the season was open. 

There were two hundred and forty hours left 
to midnight on the thirtieth of September. At 
124 


A FATAL SUCCESS 


least two hundred of these she spent on the 
pool; and when Beekman w r as too exhausted to 
manage the boat and the net and the lantern 
for her, she engaged a trustworthy guide to take 
Beekman’s place while he slept. At the end of 
the last day her score was twenty-three, with 
an average of five pounds and a quarter. His 
score was nine, with an average of four pounds. 
He had succeeded far beyond his wildest hopes. 

The next year his success became even more 
astonishing. They went to the Titan Club in 
Canada. The ugliest and most inaccessible 
sheet of water in that territory is Lake Pharaoh. 
But it is famous for the extraordinary fishing 
at a certain spot near .the outlet, where there is 
just room enough for one canoe. They camped 
on Lake Pharaoh for six weeks, by Mrs. De 
Peyster’s command; and her canoe was always 
the first to reach the fishing-ground in the morn- 
ing, and the last to leave it in the evening. 

Some one asked him, when he returned to 
the city, whether he had good luck. 

“Quite fair,” he tossed off in a careless way; 
“we took over three hundred pounds.” 

“To your own rod?” asked the inquirer, in 
admiration. 

“No-o-o,” said Beekman, “there were two 
of us.” 


125 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


There were two of them, also, the following 
year, when they joined the Natasheebo Salmon 
Club and fished that celebrated river in Labra- 
dor. The custom of drawing lots every night 
for the water that each member was to angle 
over the next day, seemed to be especially de- 
signed to fit the situation. Mrs. De Peyster 
could fish her own pool and her husband’s too. 
The result of that year’s fishing was something 
phenomenal. She had a score that made a para- 
graph in the newspapers and called out edi- 
torial comment. One editor was so inadequate 
to the situation as to entitle the article in which 
he described her triumph “The Equivalence of 
Woman.” It was well-meant, but she was not 
at all pleased with it. 

She was now not merely an angler, but a 
“record” angler of the most virulent type. 
Wherever they went, she wanted, and she got, 
the pick of the water. She seemed to be equally 
at home on all kinds of streams, large and small. 
She would pursue the little mountain-brook 
trout in the early spring, and the Labrador sal- 
mon in July, and the huge speckled trout of 
the northern lakes in September, with the same 
avidity and resolution. All that she cared for 
was to get the best and the most of the fishing at 
each place where she angled. This she always did. 

126 


A FATAL SUCCESS 


And Beekman, — well, for him there were no 
more long separations from the partner of his 
life while he went off to fish some favourite 
stream. There were no more home-comings 
after a good day’s sport to find her clad in cool 
and dainty raiment on the verandah, ready to 
welcome him with friendly badinage. There 
was not even any casting of the fly around Hard- 
scrabble Point while she sat in the canoe read- 
ing a novel, looking up with mild and pleasant 
interest when he caught a larger fish than usual, 
as an older and wiser person looks at a child 
playing some innocent game. Those days of a 
divided interest between man and wife were 
gone. She was now fully converted, and more. 
Beekman and Cornelia were one; and she was 
the one. 

The last time I saw the De Peysters he was 
following her along the Beaverkill, carrying a 
landing-net and a basket, but no rod. She 
paused for a moment to exchange greetings, 
and then strode on down the stream. He lin- 
gered for a few minutes longer to light a pipe. 

“Well, old man,” I said, “ you certainly have 
succeeded in making an angler of Mrs. De 
Peyster.” 

“Yes, indeed,” he answered, — “have n’t I?” 
Then he continued, after a few thoughtful puffs 
127 


FISHERMAN'S LUCK 


of smoke, “Do you know, 1 5 m not quite so 
sure as I used to be that fishing is the best of 
all sports. I sometimes think of giving it up 
and going in for croquet.” 


FISHING IN BOOKS 


“ Simpson. — Have you ever seen any American books on angling , Fisher? ” 
“Fisher. — No. I do not think there are any 'published. Brother Jona- 
than is not yet sufficiently civilized to produce anything original on the 
gentle art. There is good trout-fishing in America, and the streams, which 
are all free, are much less fished than in our Island, ‘ from the small num- 
ber of gentlemen ,’ as an American writer says, ‘ who are at leisure to give 
their time to it .’” — William Andrew Chatto: The Angler’s Souvenir 
(London, 1835). 


FISHING IN BOOKS 


^PHAT wise man and accomplished scholar, 
A Sir Henry Wotton, the friend of Izaak 
Walton and ambassador of King James I. to 
the republic of Venice, was accustomed to say 
that “he would rather live five May months 
than forty Decembers.” The reason for this 
preference was no secret to those who knew 
him. It had nothing to do with British or 
Venetian politics. It was simply because De- 
cember, with all its domestic joys, is practically 
a dead month in the angler’s calendar. 

His occupation is gone. The better sort of 
fish are out of season. The trout are lean and 
haggard: it is no trick to catch them and no 
treat to eat them. The salmon, all except the 
silly kelts, have run out to sea, and the place 
of their habitation no man knoweth. There is 
nothing for the angler to do but wait for the 
return of spring, and meanwhile encourage and 
sustain his patience with such small consola- 
tions in kind as a friendly Providence may put 
within his reach. 

Some solace may be found, on a day of crisp, 
wintry weather, in the childish diversion of 
131 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


catching pickerel through the ice. This method 
of taking fish is practised on a large scale and 
with elaborate machinery by men who supply 
the market. I speak not of their commercial 
enterprise and its gross equipage, but of ice- 
fishing in its more sportive and desultory form, 
as it is pursued by country boys and the incor- 
rigible village idler. 

You choose for this pastime a pond where the 
ice is not too thick, lest the labour of cutting 
through should be discouraging; nor too thin, 
lest the chance of breaking in should be em- 
barrassing. You then chop out, with almost 
any kind of a hatchet or pick, a number of holes 
in the ice, making each one six or eight inches 
in diameter, and placing them about a dozen 
feet apart. If you happen to know the course 
of a current flowing through the pond, or the 
location of a shoal frequented by minnows, you 
will do well to keep near it. Over each hole 
you set a small contrivance called a “tilt-up.” 
It consists of two sticks fastened in the middle, 
at right angles to each other. The stronger of 
the two is laid across the opening in the ice. 
The other is thus balanced above the aperture, 
with a baited hook and line attached to one end, 
while the other end is adorned with a little 
flag. For choice, I would have the flags red. 

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FISHING IN BOOKS 

They look gayer, and I imagine they are more 
lucky. 

When you have thus baited and set your 
tilt-ups, — twenty or thirty of them, — you may 
put on your skates and amuse yourself by glid- 
ing to and fro on the smooth surface of the ice, 
cutting figures of eight and grapevines and dia- 
mond twists, while you wait for the pickerel to 
begin their part of the performance. They will 
let you know when they are ready. 

A fish, swimming around in the dim depths 
under the ice, sees one of your baits, fancies it, 
and takes it in. The moment he tries to run 
away with it he tilts the little red flag into the 
air and waves it backward and forward. “Be 
quick!” he signals all unconsciously; “here I 
am; come and pull me up !” 

When two or three flags are fluttering at the 
same moment, far apart on the pond, you must 
skate with speed and haul in your lines promptly. 

How hard it is, sometimes, to decide which 
one you will take first ! That flag in the middle 
of the pond has been waving for at least a min- 
ute, but the other, in the corner of the bay, is 
tilting up and down more violently: it must be 
a larger fish. Great Dagon ! there ’s another 
red signal flying, away over by the point ! You 
hesitate, you make a few strokes in one direc- 
133 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


tion, then you whirl around and dart the other 
way. Meantime one of the tilt-ups, constructed 
with too short a cross-stick, has been pulled to 
one side, and disappears in the hole. One pick- 
erel in the pond carries a flag. Another tilt-up 
ceases to move and falls flat upon the ice. The 
bait has been stolen. You dash desperately 
toward the third flag and pull in the only fish 
that is left, — probably the smallest of them all ! 

A surplus of opportunities does not insure the 
best luck. 

A room with seven doors — like the famous 
apartment in Washington’s headquarters at 
Newburgh — is an invitation to bewilderment. 
I would rather see one fair opening in life than 
be confused by three dazzling chances. 

There was a good story about fishing through 
the ice which formed part of the stock-in-con- 
versation of that ingenious woodsman, Martin 
Moody, Esquire, of Big Tupper Lake. “’T was 
a blame cold day,” he said, “and the lines friz 
up stiff er ’n a fence- wire, jus’ as fast as I pulled 
’em in, and my fingers got so dum’ frosted I 
could n’t bait the hooks. But the fish was 
thicker and hungrier ’n flies in June. So I jus 5 
took a piece of bait and held it over one o’ the 
holes. Every time a fish jumped up to git it, 
I ’d kick him out on the ice. I tell ye, sir, I 
134 


FISHING IN BOOKS 

kicked out more ’n four hundred pounds of 
pick’rel that morning. Yaas, ’t was a big lot, 
I ’low, but then ’t was a cold day! I jus’ 
stacked ’em up solid, like cordwood.” 

Let us now leave this frigid subject! Iced 
fishing is but a chilling and unsatisfactory imi- 
tation of real sport. The angler will soon turn 
from it with satiety, and seek a better consola- 
tion for the winter of his discontent in the en- 
tertainment of fishing in books. 

Angling is the only sport that boasts the 
honour of having given a classic to literature. 

Izaak Walton’s success with The Compleat 
Angler was a fine illustration of fisherman’s 
luck. He set out, with some aid from an adept 
in fly-fishing and cookery, named Thomas 
Barker, to produce a little “ discourse of fish 
and fishing” which should serve as a useful 
manual for quiet persons inclined to follow the 
contemplative man’s recreation. He came home 
with a book which has made his name beloved 
by ten generations of gentle readers, and given 
him a secure place in the Pantheon of letters, — 
not a haughty eminence, but a modest niche, 
all his own, and ever adorned with grateful 
offerings of fresh flowers. 

This was great luck. But it was well- 
135 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

deserved, and therefore it has not been grudged 
or envied. 

Walton was a man so peaceful and contented, 
so friendly in his disposition, and so innocent in 
all his goings, that only three other writers, so 
far as I know, have ever spoken ill of him. 

One was that sour-complexioned Cromwellian 
trooper, Richard Franck, who wrote in 1658 an 
envious book entitled Northern Memoirs , cal- 
culated for the Meridian of Scotland , &c., to which 
is added The Contemplative and Practical Angler . 
In this book the furious Franck first pays 
Walton the flattery of imitation, and then 
further adorns him with abuse, calling The 
Compleat Angler “an indigested octavo, stuffed 
with morals from Dubravius and others,” and 
more than hinting that the father of anglers 
knew little or nothing of “his uncultivated art.” 
Walton was a Churchman and a Loyalist, you 
see, while Franck was a Commonwealth man 
and an Independent. 

The second detractor of Walton was Lord 
Byron, who wrote 

“ The quaint , old , cruel coxcomb in his gullet 

Should have a hook , and a small trout to pull it .” 

But Byron is certainly a poor authority on the 
quality of mercy. His contempt need not cause 
136 


FISHING IN BOOKS 


an honest man overwhelming distress. I should 
call it a complimentary dislike. 

The third author who expressed unpleasant 
sentiments in regard to Walton was Leigh Hunt. 
Here, again, I fancy that partizan prejudice 
had something to do with the dislike. Hunt 
was a radical in politics and religion. More- 
over there was a feline strain in his character, 
which made it necessary for him to scratch 
somebody now and then, as a relief to his feel- 
ings. 

Walton was a great quoter. His book is not 
“stuffed,” as Franck jealously alleged, but it is 
certainly well sauced with piquant references to 
other writers, as early as the author of the 
Book of Job, and as late as John Dennys, who 
betrayed to the world The Secrets of Angling 
in 1613. Walton further seasoned his book 
with fragments of information about fish and 
fishing, more or less apocryphal, gathered from 
iElian, Pliny, Plutarch, Sir Francis Bacon, Du- 
bravius, Gesner, Rondeletius, the learned Aldro- 
vandus, the venerable Bede, the divine Du 
Bartas, and many others. He borrowed freely 
for the adornment of his discourse, and did not 
scorn to make use of what may be called live 
quotations— that is to say, the unpublished re- 
marks of his near contemporaries, caught in 
137 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

friendly conversation, or handed down by oral 
tradition. 

But these various seasonings did not disguise, 
they only enhanced, the delicate flavour of the 
dish which he served up to his readers. This 
was all of his own taking, and of a sweetness 
quite incomparable. 

I like a writer who is original enough to water 
his garden with quotations, without fear of 
being drowned out. Such men are Charles Lamb 
and James Russell Lowell and John Burroughs. 

Walton’s book is as fresh as a handful of 
wild violets and sweet lavender. It breathes 
the odours of the green fields and the woods. 
It tastes of simple, homely, appetizing things 
like the “ syllabub of new verjuice in a new- 
made haycock” which the milkwoman promised 
to give Piscator the next time he came that 
way. Its music plays the tune of A Contented 
Heart over and over again without dulness, and 
charms us into harmony with 

“A noise like the sound of a hidden brook 
In the leafy month of June , 

That to the sleeping woods all night 
Singeth a quiet tune” 

Walton has been quoted even more than any 
of the writers whom he quotes. It would be 
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FISHING IN BOOKS 


difficult, even if it were not ungrateful, to write 
about angling without referring to him. Some 
pretty saying, some wise reflection from his 
pages, suggests itself at almost every turn of the 
subject. 

And yet his book, though it be the best, is 
not the only readable one that his favourite 
recreation has begotten. The literature of ang- 
ling is extensive, as any one may see who will 
look at the list of the collection presented by 
Mr. John Bartlett to Harvard University, or 
study the catalogue of the piscatorial library of 
Mr. Dean Sage, of Albany, who himself has con- 
tributed an admirable book on The Ristigouche. 

Nor is this literature altogether composed of 
dry and technical treatises, interesting only to 
the confirmed anglimaniac, or to the young nov- 
ice ardent in pursuit of practical information. 
There is a good deal of juicy reading in it. 

Books about angling should be divided (ac- 
cording to De Quincey’s method) into two 
classes, — the literature of knowledge, and the 
literature of power. 

The first class contains the handbooks on 
rods and tackle, the directions how to angle 
for different kinds of fish, and the guides to 
various fishing-resorts. The weakness of these 
books is that they soon fall out of date, as the 
139 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


manufacture of tackle is improved, the art of 
angling refined, and the fish in once-famous 
waters are educated or exterminated. 

Alas, how transient is the fashion of this 
world, even in angling ! The old manuals with 
their precise instruction for trimming and paint- 
ing trout-rods eighteen feet long, and their pain- 
ful description of “oyntments” made of nettle- 
juice, fish-hawk oil, camphor, cat’s fat, or as- 
safcedita, (supposed to allure the fish,) are 
altogether behind the age. Many of the flies 
described by Charles Cotton and Thomas Barker 
seem to have gone out of style among the trout. 
Perhaps familiarity has bred contempt. Gen- 
eration after generation of fish have seen these 
same old feathered confections floating on the 
water, and learned by sharp experience that 
they do not taste good. The blase trout de- 
mand something new, something modern. It 
is for this reason, I suppose, that an altogether 
original fly, unheard of, startling, will often do 
great execution in an over-fished pool. 

Certain it is that the art of angling, in settled 
regions, is growing more dainty and difficult. 
You must cast a longer, lighter line; you must 
use finer leaders; you must have your flies 
dressed on smaller hooks. 

140 


FISHING IN BOOKS 


And another thing is certain: in many places 
(described in the ancient volumes) where fish 
were once abundant, they are now like the ship- 
wrecked sailors in Vergil his ^Eneid, — 

“ran nantes in gurgite vasto” 

The floods themselves are also disappearing. 
Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman was telling me, 
the other day, of the trout-brook that used to 
run through the Connecticut village when he 
nourished a poet’s youth. He went back to 
visit the stream a few years since, and it was 
gone, literally vanished from the face of earth, 
stolen to make a water-supply for the town, and 
used for such base purposes as the washing of 
clothes and the sprinkling of streets. 

I remember an expedition with my father, 
some twenty years ago, to Nova Scotia, whither 
we set out to realize the hopes kindled by an 
Angler’s Guide written in the early sixties. It 
was like looking for tall clocks in the farm- 
houses around Boston. The harvest had been 
well gleaned before our arrival, and in the very 
place where our visionary author located his 
most famous catch we found a summer hotel 
and a sawmill. 

’Tis strange and sad, how many regions 
141 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


there are where “the fishing was wonderful 
forty years ago” ! 

The second class of angling books — the litera- 
ture of power — includes all (even those written 
with some purpose of instruction) in which the 
gentle fascinations of the sport, the attractions 
of living out-of-doors, the beauties of stream and 
woodland, the recollections of happy adventure, 
and the cheerful thoughts that make the best 
of a day’s luck, come clearly before the author’s 
mind and find some fit expression in his words. 
Of such books, thank Heaven, there is a plenty 
to bring a Maytide charm and cheer into the 
fisherman’s dull December. I will name, by 
way of random tribute from a grateful but un- 
methodical memory, a few of these consolatory 
volumes. 

First of all comes a family of books that were 
born in Scotland and smell of the heather. 

Whatever a Scotchman’s conscience permits 
him to do, is likely to be done with vigour and 
a fiery mind. In trade and in theology, in fish- 
ing and in fighting, he is all there and thoroughly 
kindled. 

There is an old-fashioned book called The 
Moor and the Loch , by John Colquhoun, which 
is full of contagious enthusiasm. Thomas Tod 
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FISHING IN BOOKS 

Stoddart was a most impassioned angler, (though 
over-given to strong language,) and in his An- 
gling Reminiscences he has touched the sub- 
ject with a happy hand, — happiest when he 
breaks into poetry and tosses out a song for the 
fisherman. Professor John Wilson of the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh held the chair of Moral 
Philosophy in that instiution, but his true fame 
rests on his well-earned titles of M. A. and 
F. R. S., — Master of Angling, and Fisherman 
Royal of Scotland. His Recreations of Chris- 
topher North , albeit their humour is sometimes 
too boisterously hammered in, are genial and 
generous essays, overflowing with passages of 
good-fellowship and pedestrian fancy. I would 
recommend any person in a dry and mel- 
ancholy state of mind to read his paper on 
“Streams,” in the first volume of Essays Critical 
and Imaginative . But it must be said, by way 
of warning to those with whom dryness is a 
matter of principle, that all Scotch fishing- 
books are likely to be sprinkled with Highland 
Dew. 

Among English anglers, Sir Humphry Davy 
is one of whom Christopher North speaks rather 
slightingly. Nevertheless his Salmonia is well 
worth reading, not only because it was written by 
a learned man, but because it exhales the spirit 
143 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


of cheerful piety and vital wisdom. Charles 
Kingsley was another great man who wrote 
well about angling. His Chalk-Stream Studies 
are clear and sparkling. They cleanse the mind 
and refresh the heart and put us more in love 
with living. Of quite a different style are the 
Maxims and Hints for an Angler , and Miseries 
of Fishing , which were written by Richard Penn, 
a grandson of the founder of Pennsylvania. 
This is a curious and rare little volume, pro- 
fessing to be a compilation from the Common 
Place Book of the Houghton Fishing Club , and 
dealing with the subject from a Pickwickian 
point of view. I suppose that William Penn 
would have thought his grandson a frivolous 
writer. 

But he could not have entertained such an 
opinion of the Honourable Robert Boyle, of 
whose Occasional Reflections no less than twelve 
discourses treat “of Angling Improved to Spiri- 
tual Uses.” The titles of some of these dis- 
courses are quaint enough to quote. “Upon 
the being called upon to rise early on a very 
fair morning.” “Upon the mounting, singing, 
and lighting of larks.” “Upon fishing with a 
counterfeit fly.” “Upon a danger arising from 
an unseasonable contest with the steersman.” 
“Upon one’s drinking water out of the brim of 
144 


FISHING IN BOOKS 


his hat.” With such good texts it is easy to 
endure, and easier still to spare, the sermons. 

Englishman carry their love of travel into 
their anglimania, and many of their books de- 
scribe fishing adventures in foreign parts. Ram- 
bles with a Fishing-Rod , by E. S. Roscoe, tells 
of happy days in the Salzkammergut and the 
Bavarian Highlands and Normandy. Fish- 
Tails and a Few Others , by Bradnock Hall, 
contains some delightful chapters on Norway. 
The Rod in India, by H. S. Thomas, narrates 
wonderful adventures with the Mahseer and 
the Rohu and other pagan fish. 

But, after all, I like the English angler best 
when he travels at home, and writes of dry- 
fly fishing in the Itchen or the Test, or of wet- 
fly fishing in Northumberland or Sutherland- 
shire. There is a fascinating booklet that ap- 
peared quietly, some years ago, called An Am- 
ateur Angler's Days in Dove Dale . It runs as 
easily and merrily and kindly as a little river, 
full of peace and pure enjoyment. Other books 
of the same quality have since been written by 
the same pen, — Days in Clover, Fresh Woods, 
By Meadow and Stream. It is no secret, I be- 
lieve, that the author is Mr. Edward Marston, 
the senior member of a London publishing- 
house. But he still clings to his retiring pen- 
145 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


name of “The Amateur Angler,” and represents 
himself, by a graceful fiction, as all unskilled in 
the art. An instance of similar modesty is 
found in Mr. Andrew Lang, who entitles the 
first chapter of his delightful Angling Sketches 
(without which no fisherman’s library is com- 
plete), “ Confessions of a Duffer.” This an 
engaging liberty which no one else would dare 
to take. 

The best English fish-story pure and simple, 
that I know, is Crocker's Hole , by R. D. 
Blackmore, the creator of Lorna Doone. 

Let us turn now to American books about 
angling. Of these the merciful dispensations 
of Providence have brought forth no small store 
since Mr. William Andrew Chatto made the 
ill-natured remark which is pilloried at the 
head of this chapter. By the way, it seems that 
Mr. Chatto had never heard of “The Schuyl- 
kill Fishing Company,” which was founded on 
that romantic stream near Philadelphia in 1732, 
nor seen the Authentic Historical Memoir of that 
celebrated and amusing society. 

I am sorry for the man who cannot find 
pleasure in reading the appendix of The Ameri- 
can Angler's Book , by Thaddeus Norris; or the 
discursive pages of Frank Forester’s Fish and 
Fishing; or the introduction and notes of that 
146 


FISHING IN BOOKS 


unexcelled edition of Walton which was made 
by the Reverend Doctor George W. Bethune; 
or Superior Fishing and Game Fish of the North , 
by Mr. Robert B. Roosevelt; or Henshall’s 
Book of the Black Bass; or the admirable digres- 
sions of Mr. Henry P. Wells, in his Fly-Rods 
and Fly -Tackle, and The American Salmon 
Angler . Dr. William C. Prime has never put 
his profound knowledge of the art of angling 
into a manual of technical instruction; but he 
has written of the delights of the sport in Owl 
Creek Letters , and in 1 Go A-Fishing , and in 
some of the chapters of Along New England 
Roads and Among New England Hills , with a 
persuasive skill that has created many new an- 
glers, and made many old ones grateful. It is 
a fitting coincidence of heredity that his niece, 
Mrs. Annie Trumbull Slosson, is the author of 
the most tender and pathetic of all angling 
stories, Fishin’ Jimmy . 

But it is not only in books written altogether 
from his peculiar point of view and to humour 
his harmless insanity, that the angler may find 
pleasant reading about his favourite pastime. 
There are excellent bits of fishing scattered all 
through the field of good literature. It seems 
as if almost all the men who could write well 
147 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

had a friendly feeling for the contemplative 
sport. 

Plutarch, in The Lives of the Noble Grecians 
and Romans , tells a capital fish-story of the 
manner in which the Egyptian Cleopatra fooled 
that far-famed Roman wight, Marc Antony, 
when they were angling together on the Nile. 
As I recall it, from a perusal in early boyhood, 
Antony was having very bad luck indeed; in 
fact he had taken nothing, and was sadly put 
out about it. Cleopatra, thinking to get a rise 
out of him, secretly told one of her attendants 
to dive over the opposite side of the barge and 
fasten a salt fish to the Roman general’s hook. 
The attendant was much pleased with this 
commission, and, having executed it, proceeded 
to add a fine stroke of his own; for when he had 
made the fish fast on the hook, he gave a great 
pull to the line and held on tightly. Antony was 
much excited and began to haul violently at 
his tackle. 

“By Jupiter!” he exclaimed, “it was long in 
coming, but I have a colossal bite now.” 

“Have a care,” said Cleopatra, laughing be- 
hind her sunshade, “or he will drag you into 
the water. You must give him line when he 
pulls hard.” 

“Not a denarius will I give!” rudely re- 
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FISHING IN BOOKS 


sponded Antony. “I mean to have this hali- 
but or Hades !” 

At this moment the man under the boat, 
being out of breath, let the line go, and Antony, 
falling backward, drew up the salted herring. 

“Take that fish off the hook, Palinurus,” he 
proudly said. “It is not as large as I thought, 
but it looks like the oldest one that has been 
caught to-day.” 

Such, in its general effect, is the tale narrated 
by the veracious Plutarch. And if any careful 
critic wishes to verify my quotation from 
memory, he may compare it with the proper 
page of Langhorne’s translation; I think it is in 
the second volume, near the end. 

Sir Walter Scott, who once described himself 
as 

“No fisher , 

But a well-wisher 
To the game,” 

has an amusing passage of angling in the third 
chapter of Redgauntlet. Darsie Latimer is re- 
lating his adventures in Dumfriesshire. “By 
the way,” says he, “old Cotton’s instructions, by 
which I hoped to qualify myself for the gentle 
society of anglers, are not worth a farthing for 
this meridian. I learned this by mere accident, 
149 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


after I had waited four mortal hours. I shall 
never forget an impudent urchin, a cowherd, 
about twelve years old, without either brogue 
or bonnet, barelegged, with a very indifferent 
pair of breeches, — how the villain grinned in 
scorn at my landing-net, my plummet, and the 
gorgeous jury of flies which I had assembled to 
destroy all the fish in the river. I was induced 
at last to lend the rod to the sneering scoundrel, 
to see what he would make of it; and he not 
only half-filled my basket in an hour, but liter- 
ally taught me to kill two trouts with my own 
hand.” 

Thus ancient and well-authenticated is the 
superstition of the angling powers of the bare- 
footed country-boy, — in fiction. 

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, in that valuable 
but over-capitalized book, My Novel , makes use 
of Fishing for Allegorical Purposes. The epi- 
sode of John Burley and the One-eyed Perch 
not only points a Moral but adorns the Tale. 

In the works of R. D. Blackmore, angling 
plays a less instructive but a pleasanter part. 
It is closely interwoven with love. There is a 
magical description of trout-fishing on a meadow- 
brook in Alice Lorraine. And who that has 
read Lorna Doone, (pity for the man or woman 
that knows not the delight of that book !) can 
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FISHING IN BOOKS 


ever forget how young John Ridd dared his way 
up the gliddery water-slide, after loaches, and 
found Lorna in a fair green meadow adorned 
with flowers, at the top of the brook ? 

I made a little journey into the Doone Coun- 
try once, just to see that brook and to fish in 
it. The stream looked smaller, and the water- 
slide less terrible, than they seemed in the book. 
But it was a mighty pretty place after all; and 
I suppose that even John Ridd, when he came 
back to it in after years, found it shrunken a 
little. 

All the streams were larger in our boyhood 
than they are now, except, perhaps, that which 
flows from the sweetest spring of all, the foun- 
tain of love, which John Ridd discovered beside 
the Bagworthy River, — and I, on the willow- 
shaded banks of the Patapsco, where the Balti- 
more girls used to fish for gudgeons, — and you ? 
Come, gentle reader, is there no stream whose 
name is musical to you, because of a hidden 
spring of love that you once found on its shore ? 
The waters of that fountain never fail, and in 
them alone we taste the undiminished fulness 
of immortal youth. 

The stories of William Black are enlivened 
with fish, and he knew, better than most men, 
how they should be taken. Whenever he wanted 
151 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


to get two young people engaged to each other, 
all other devices failing, he sent them out to 
angle together. If it had not been for fishing, 
everything in A Princess of Thule and White 
Heather would have gone wrong. 

But even men who have been disappointed in 
love may angle for solace or diversion. I have 
known some old bachelors who fished excellently 
well; and others I have known who could find, 
and give, much pleasure in a day on the stream, 
though they had no skill in the sport. Of this 
class was Washington Irving, with an extract 
from whose Sketch Book I will bring this ramb- 
ling dissertation to an end. 

“Our first essay,” says he, “was along a moun- 
tain brook among the highlands of the Hudson; 
a most unfortunate place for the execution of 
those piscatory tactics which had been invented 
along the velvet margins of quiet English riv- 
ulets. It was one of those wild streams that 
lavish, among our romantic solitudes, unheeded 
beauties enough to fill the sketch-book of a 
hunter of the picturesque. Sometimes it would 
leap down rocky shelves, making small cascades 
over which the trees threw their broad balancing 
sprays, and long nameless weeds hung in fringes 
from the impending banks, dripping with dia- 
152 


FISHING IN BOOKS 


mond drops. Sometimes it would brawl and 
fret along a ravine in the matted shade of a 
forest, filling it with murmurs; and, after this 
termagant career, would steal forth into open 
day, with the most placid, demure face imagina- 
ble; as I have seen some pestilent shrew of a 
housewife, after filling her home with uproar 
and ill-humour, come dimpling out of doors, 
swimming and courtesying, and smiling upon 
all the world. 

“How smoothly would this vagrant brook 
glide, at such times, through some bosom of 
green meadow-land among the mountains, where 
the quiet was only interrupted by the occasional 
tinkling of a bell from the lazy cattle among the 
clover, or the sound of a woodcutter’s axe from 
the neighbouring forest ! 

“For my part, I was always a bungler at all 
kinds of sport that required either patience or 
adroitness, and had not angled above half an 
hour before I had completely * satisfied the senti- 
ment,’ and convinced myself of the truth of 
Izaak Walton’s opinion, that angling is some- 
thing like poetry, — a man must be born to it. 
I hooked myself instead of the fish; tangled my 
line in every tree; lost my bait; broke my rod; 
until I gave up the attempt in despair, and 
153 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


passed the day under the trees, reading old 
Izaak, satisfied that it was his fascinating vein 
of honest simplicity and rural feeling that had 
bewitched me, and not the passion for angling.” 


154 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 


“ The best rose-bush , after all, is not that which has the fewest thorns, but 
that which bears the finest roses ” — Solomon Singlewitz: The Life of 
Adam. 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

I 

TT was not all unadulterated sweetness, of 
course. There were enough difficulties in 
the way to make it seem desirable; and a few 
stings of annoyance, now and then, lent pi- 
quancy to the adventure. But a good memory, 
in dealing with the past, has the art of strain- 
ing out all the beeswax of discomfort, and stor- 
ing up little jars of pure hydromel. As we look 
back at our six weeks in Norway, we agree that 
no period of our partnership in experimental 
honeymooning has yielded more honey to the 
same amount of comb. 

Several considerations led us to the resolve of 
taking our honeymoon experimentally rather 
than chronologically. We started from the self- 
evident proposition that it ought to be the 
happiest time in married life. 

“ It is perfectly ridiculous,” said my lady 
Graygown, “to suppose that a thing like that 
can be fixed by the calendar. It may possibly 
fall in the first month after the wedding, but 
it is not likely. Just think how slightly two 
157 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


people know each other when they get married. 
They are in love, of course, but that is not at 
all the same as being well acquainted. Some- 
times the more love, the less acquaintance ! 
And sometimes the more acquaintance, the less 
love ! Besides, at first there are always the 
notes of thanks for the wedding-presents to be 
written, and the letters of congratulation to be 
answered, and it is awfully hard to make each 
one sound a little different from the others and 
perfectly natural. Then, you know, everybody 
seems to suspect you of the folly of being newly 
married. You run across your friends every- 
where, and they grin when they see you. You 
can’t help feeling as if a lot of people were 
watching you through opera-glasses, or taking 
snap-shots at you with a kodak. It is absurd 
to imagine that the first month must be the real 
honeymoon. And just suppose it were, — what 
bad luck that would be ! What would there be 
to look forward to?” 

Every word that fell from her lips seemed to 
me like the wisdom of Diotima. 

“You are right,” I cried; “Portia could not 
hold a candle to you for clear argument. Be- 
sides, suppose two people are imprudent enough 
to get married in the first week of December, 
as we did ! — what becomes of the chronological 
158 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

honeymoon then? There is no fishing in De- 
cember, and all the rivers of Paradise, at least 
in our latitude, are frozen up. No, my lady, 
we will discover our month of honey by the 
empirical method. Each year we will set out 
together to seek it in a solitude for two; and we 
will compare notes on moons, and strike the 
final balance when we are sure that our happiest 
experiment has been completed.” 

We are not sure of that, even yet. We are 
still engaged, as a committee of two, in our 
philosophical investigation, and we decline to 
make anything but a report of progress. We 
know more now than we did when we first went 
honeymooning in the city of Washington. For 
one thing, we are certain that not even the far- 
famed rosemary-fields of Narbonne, or the fra- 
grant hillsides of the Corbieres, yield a sweeter 
harvest to the busy-ness of the bees than the 
Norwegian meadows and mountain-slopes 
yielded to our idleness in the summer of 1888. 

II 

The rural landscape of Norway, on the long 
easterly slope that leads up to the watershed 
among the mountains of the western coast, is 
not unlike that of Vermont or New Hampshire. 

159 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

The railway from Christiania to the Randsfjord 
carried us through a hilly country of scattered 
farms and villages. Wood played a prominent 
part in the scenery. There were dark stretches 
of forest on the hilltops and in the valleys ; rivers 
filled with floating logs; sawmills beside the 
waterfalls; wooden farmhouses painted white; 
and rail-fences around the fields. The people 
seemed sturdy, prosperous, independent. They 
had the familiar habit of coming down to the 
station to see the train arrive and depart. We 
might have fancied ourselves on a journey 
through the Connecticut valley, if it had not 
been for the soft sing-song of the Norwegian 
speech and the uniform politeness of the rail- 
way officials. 

What a room that was in the inn at Rands- 
fjord where we spent our first night out ! Vast, 
bare, primitive, with eight windows to admit 
the persistent nocturnal twilight; a sea-like floor 
of blue-painted boards, unbroken by a single 
island of carpet; and a castellated stove in one 
corner: an apartment for giants, with two little 
beds for dwarfs on opposite shores of the ocean. 
There was no telephone; so we arranged a sys- 
tem of communication with a fishing-line, to 
make sure that the sleepy partner should be 
awake in time for the early boat in the morning. 

160 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

The journey up the lake took seven hours, 
and reminded us of a voyage on Lake George; 
placid, picturesque, and pervaded by summer 
boarders. Somewhere on the way we had lunch, 
and were well fortified to take the road when 
the steamboat landed us at Odnaes, at the head 
of the lake, about two o’clock in the afternoon. 

There are several methods in which you may 
drive through Norway. The government main- 
tains posting-stations at the farms along the 
main travelled highways, where you can hire 
horses and carriages of various kinds. There 
are also English tourist agencies which make a 
business of providing travellers with complete 
transportation. You may try either of these 
methods alone, or you may make a judicious 
mixture. 

Thus, by an application of the theory of per- 
mutations and combinations, you have your 
choice among four ways of accomplishing a 
driving-tour. First, you may engage a carriage 
and pair, with a driver, from one of the tourist 
agencies, and roll through your journey in sed- 
entary ease, provided your horses do not go 
lame or give out. Second, you may rely alto- 
gether upon the posting-stations to send you on 
your journey; and this is a very pleasant, lively 
way, provided there is not a crowd of travellers 
161 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


on the road before you, who take up all the 
comfortable conveyances and leave you nothing 
but a jolting cart or a ramshackle kariol of the 
time of St. Olaf. Third, you may rent an easy- 
riding vehicle (by choice a well-hung gig) for 
the entire trip, and change ponies at the stations 
as you drive along; this is the safest way. The 
fourth method is to hire your horseflesh at the 
beginning for the whole journey, and pick up 
your vehicles from place to place. This method 
is theoretically possible, but I do not know any 
one who has tried it. 

Our gig was waiting for us at Odnaes. There 
was a brisk little mouse-coloured pony in the 
shafts; and it took but a moment to strap our 
leather portmanteau on the board at the back, 
perch the postboy on top of it, and set out for 
our first experience of a Norwegian driving-tour. 

The road at first was level and easy; and we 
bowled along smoothly through the valley of the 
Etnaelv, among drooping birch-trees and green 
fields where the larks were singing. At Tom- 
levolden, ten miles farther on, we reached the 
first station, a comfortable old farmhouse, with 
a great array of wooden outbuildings. Here we 
had a chance to try our luck with the Nor- 
wegian language in demanding, “ en hest , saa 
straxt som muligt ” This was what the guide- 
162 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

book told us to say when we wanted a 
horse. 

There is great fun in making a random cast 
on the surface of a strange language. You 
cannot tell what will come up. It is like an 
experiment in witchcraft. We should not have 
been at all surprised, I must confess, if our pre- 
liminary incantation had brought forth a cow 
or a basket of eggs. 

But the good people seemed to divine our in- 
tentions; and while we were waiting for one of 
the stable-boys to catch and harness the new 
horse, a yellow-haired maiden inquired, in very 
fair English, if we would not be pleased to have 
a cup of tea and some butter-bread; which we 
did with great comfort. 

The Skydsgut , or so-called postboy, for the 
next stage of the journey, was a full-grown man 
of considerable weight. As he climbed to his 
perch on our portmanteau, my lady Graygown 
congratulated me on the prudence which had 
provided that one side of that receptacle should 
be of an inflexible stiffness, quite incapable of 
being crushed; otherwise, asked she, what would 
have become of her Sunday frock under the 
pressure of this stern necessity of a postboy ? 

But I think we should not have cared very 
much if all our luggage had been smashed on 
163 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


this journey, for the road now began to ascend, 
and the views over the Etnadal, with its wind- 
ing river, were of a breadth and sweetness most 
consoling. Up and up we went, curving in and 
out through the forest, crossing wild ravines and 
shadowy dells, looking back at every turn on 
the wide landscape bathed in golden light. At 
the station of Sveen, where we changed horse 
and postboy again, it was already evening. 
The sun was down, but the mystical radiance 
of the northern twilight illumined the sky. The 
dark fir-woods spread around us, and their 
odourous breath was diffused through the cool, 
still air. We were crossing the level summit of 
the plateau, twenty-three hundred feet above 
the sea. Two tiny woodland lakes gleamed out 
among the trees. Then the road began to 
slope gently towards the west, and emerged 
suddenly on the edge of the forest, looking out 
over the long, lovely vale of Valders, with snow- 
touched mountains on the horizon, and the 
river Baegna shimmering along its bed, a thou- 
sand feet below us. 

What a heart-enlarging outlook! What a 
keen joy of motion, as the wheels rolled down the 
long incline, and the sure-footed pony swung 
between the shafts and rattled his hoofs merrily 
on the hard road ! What long, deep breaths of 
164 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

silent pleasure in the crisp night air! What 
wondrous mingling of lights in the afterglow of 
sunset, and the primrose bloom of the first 
stars, and faint foregleamings of the rising 
moon creeping over the hill behind us ! What 
perfection of companionship without words, as 
we rode together through a strange land, along 
the edge of the dark ! 

* When we finished the thirty-fifth mile, and 
drew up in the courtyard of the station at Fry- 
denlund, Graygown sprang out, with a little 
sigh of regret. 

“Is it last night,” she cried, “or to-morrow 
morning ? I have n’t the least idea what time 
it is; it seems as if we had been travelling in 
eternity.” 

“It is just ten o’clock,” I answered, “and the 
landlord says there will be a hot supper of trout 
ready for us in five minutes.” 

< It would be vain to attempt to give a daily 
record of the whole journey in which we made 
this fair beginning. It was a most idle and 
unsystematic pilgrimage. We wandered up and 
down, and turned aside when fancy beckoned. 
Sometimes we hurried on as fast as the horses 
would carry us, driving sixty or seventy miles 
a day; sometimes we loitered and dawdled, as 
if we did not care whether we got anywhere or 
165 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

not. If a place pleased us, we stayed and tried 
the fishing. If we were tired of driving, we 
took to the water, and travelled by steamer 
along a fjord, or hired a rowboat to cross from 
point to point. One day we would be in a 
good little hotel, with polyglot guests, and 
serving-maids in stagey Norse costumes, — like 
the famous inn at Stalheim, which commands 
the amazing panorama of the Naerodal. An- 
other day we would lodge in a plain farmhouse 
like the station at Nedre Vasenden, where eggs 
and fish were the staples of diet, and the farm- 
er’s daughter wore the picturesque peasants’ 
dress, with its tall cap, without any dramatic 
airs. Lakes and rivers, precipices and gorges, 
waterfalls and glaciers and snowy mountains 
were our daily repast. We drove over five hun- 
dred miles in various kinds of open wagons, 
kariols for one, and stolkjaerres for two, after 
we had left our comfortable gig behind us. We 
saw the ancient dragon-gabled church of Bor- 
gund; and the delightful, showery town of Ber- 
gen; and the gloomy cliffs of the Geiranger- 
Fjord laced with filmy cataracts; and the be- 
witched crags of the Romsdal; and the wide, 
desolate landscape of Jerkin; and a hundred 
other unforgotten scenes. Somehow or other 
we went, (around and about, and up and down, 
166 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

now on wheels, and now on foot, and now in a 
boat,) all the way from Christiania to Throndh- 
jem. My lady Graygown could give you the 
exact itinerary, for she has been well brought 
up, and always keeps a diary. All I know is, 
that we set out from the one city and arrived 
at the other, and we gathered by the way a 
collection of instantaneous mental photographs. 
I am going to turn them over now, and pick 
out a few of the clearest pictures. 

Ill 

Here is the bridge over the Naeselv at Fager- 
naes. Just below it is a good pool for trout, but 
the river is broad and deep and swift. It is 
difficult wading to get out within reach of the 
fish. I have taken half a dozen small ones and 
come to the end of my cast. There is a big one 
lying out in the middle of the river, I am sure. 
But the water already rises to my hips; another 
step will bring it over the top of my waders, 
and send me downstream feet uppermost. 

“Take care !” cries Graygown from the grassy 
bank, where she sits placidly crocheting some 
mysterious fabric of white yarn. 

She does not see the large rock lying at the 
bottom of the river just beyond me. If I can 
167 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


step on that, and stand there without being 
swept away, I can reach the mid-current with 
my flies. It is a long stride and a slippery foot- 
hold, but by good luck “the last step which 
costs” is accomplished. The tiny black and 
orange hackle goes curling out over the stream, 
lights softly, and swings around with the cur- 
rent, folding and expanding its feathers as if it 
were alive. The big trout takes it promptly 
the instant it passes over him; and I play him 
and net him without moving from my perilous 
perch. 

Graygown waves her crochet-work like a 
flag, “Bravo!” she cries. “That’s a beauty, 
nearly two pounds ! But do be careful about 
coming back; you are not good enough to take 
any risks yet.” 

The station at Skogstad is a solitary farm- 
house lying far up on the bare hillside, with its 
barns and out-buildings grouped around a cen- 
tral courtyard, like a rude fortress. The river 
travels along the valley below, now wrestling 
its way through a narrow passage among the 
rocks, now spreading out at leisure in a green 
meadow. As we cross the bridge, the crystal 
water is changed to opal by the sunset glow, 
and a gentle breeze ruffles the long pools, and 
168 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

the trout are rising freely. It is the perfect 
hour for fishing. Would Graygown dare to 
drive on alone to the gate of the fortress, and 
blow upon the long horn which doubtless hangs 
beside it, and demand admittance and a lodg- 
ing, “in the name of the great Jehovah and the 
Continental Congress,” — while I angle down the 
river a mile or so ? 

Certainly she would. What door is there in 
Europe at which the American girl is afraid to 
knock? “But wait a moment. How do you 
ask for fried chicken and pancakes in Nor- 
wegian ? Kylling og Pandekage ? How fierce it 
sounds ! All right now. Run along and fish.” 

The river welcomes me like an old friend. 
The tune that it sings is the same that the flow- 
ing water repeats all around the world. Not 
otherwise do the lively rapids carry the familiar 
air, and the larger falls drone out a burly bass, 
along the west branch of the Penobscot, or 
down the valley of the Bouquet. But here 
there are no forests to conceal the course of the 
stream. It lies as free to the view as a child’s 
thought. As I follow on from pool to pool, 
picking out a good trout here and there, now 
from a rocky corner edged with foam, now from 
a swift gravelly run, now from a snug hiding- 
place that the current has hollowed out beneath 
169 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


the bank, all the way I can see the fortress far 
above me on the hillside. 

I am as sure that it has already surrendered 
to Graygown as if I could discern her white 
banner of crochet-work floating from the bat- 
tlements. 

Just before dark, I climb the hill with a heavy 
basket of fish. The castle gate is open. The 
scent of chicken and pancakes salutes the weary 
pilgrim. In a cosy little parlour, adorned with 
fluffy mats and pictures framed in pine-cones, 
lit by a hanging lamp with glass pendants, sits 
the mistress of the occasion, calmly triumphant 
and plying her crochet-needle. 

There is something mysterious about a 
woman’s fancy-work. It seems to have all the 
soothing charm of the tobacco-plant, without 
its inconveniences. Just to see her tranquillity, 
while she relaxes her mind and busies her fingers 
with a bit of tatting or embroidery or crochet, 
gives me a sense of being domesticated, a 
“ homey” feeling, anywhere in the wide world. 

If you ever go to Norway, you must be sure 
to see the Loenvand. You can set out from the 
comfortable hotel at Faleide, go up the Indvik 
Fjord in a rowboat, cross over a two-mile hill 
on foot or by carriage, spend a happy day on the 
170 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

“lake, and return to your inn in time for a late 
supper. The lake is perhaps the most beautiful 
in Norway. Long and narrow, it lies like a price- 
less emerald, hidden and guarded by jealous 
mountains. It is fed by huge glaciers, which 
hang over the shoulders of the hills like ragged 
cloaks of ice. 

As we row along the shore, trolling in vain for 
the trout that live in the ice-cold water, frag- 
ments of the tattered cloth-of-silver far above 
us, on the opposite side, are loosened by the 
touch of the summer sun, and fall from the 
precipice. They drift downward, at first, as 
noiselessly as thistledown; then they strike 
the rocks and come crashing towards the lake 
with the hollow roar of an avalanche. 

At the head of the lake we find ourselves in 
an enormous amphitheatre of mountains. Gla- 
ciers are peering down upon us. Snow-fields 
glare at us with glistening eyes. Black crags 
seem to bend above us with an eternal frown. 
Streamers of foam float from the forehead of 
the hills and the lips of the dark ravines. But 
there is a little river of cold, pure water flowing 
from one of the rivers of ice, and a pleasant 
shelter of young trees and bushes growing 
among the debris of shattered rocks; and there 
we build our camp-fire and eat our lunch. 

171 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


Hunger is a most impudent appetite. It 
makes a man forget all the proprieties. What 
place is there so lofty, so awful, that he will not 
dare to sit down in it and partake of food? 
Even on the side of Mount Sinai, the elders of 
Israel spread their out-of-door table, “and did 
eat and drink.” 

I see the Tarn of the Elk at this moment, just 
as it looked in the clear sunlight of that August 
afternoon, ten years ago. Far down in a hollow 
of the desolate hills it nestles, four thousand 
feet above the sea. The moorland trail hangs 
high above it, and, though it is a mile away, 
every curve of the treeless shore, every shoal 
and reef in the light green water is clearly visible. 
With a powerful field-glass one can almost see 
the large trout for which the pond is famous. 

The shelter-hut on the bank is built of rough 
gray stones, and the roof is leaky to the light as 
well as to the weather. But there are two beds 
in it, one for my guide and one for me; and a 
practicable fireplace, which is soon filled with a 
blaze of comfort. There is also a random library 
of novels, which former fishermen have thought- 
fully left behind them. I like strong reading 
in the wilderness. Give me a story with plenty 
of danger and wholesome fighting in it , — The 
172 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

Three Musketeers , or Treasure Island , or The 
Afghan's Knife. Intricate studies of social di- 
lemmas and tales of mild philandering seem 
bloodless and insipid. 

The trout in the Tarn of the Elk are large, 
undoubtedly, but they are also few in number 
and shy in disposition. Either some of the 
peasants have been fishing over them with the 
deadly “ otter,” or else they belong to that 
variety of the trout family known as Trutta 
damnosa , — the species which you can see but 
cannot take. We watched these aggravating 
fish playing on the surface at sunset; we saw 
them dart beneath our boat in the early morn- 
ing; but not until a driving snowstorm set in, 
about noon of the second day, did we succeed 
in persuading any of them to take the fly. 
Then they rose, for a couple of hours, with amia- 
ble perversity. I caught five, weighing be- 
tween two and four pounds each, and stopped 
because my hands were so numb that I could 
cast no longer. 

Now for a long tramp over the hills and home. 
Yes, home; for yonder in the white house at 
Drivstuen, with fuchsias and geraniums bloom- 
ing in the windows, and a pretty, friendly Norse 
girl to keep her company, my lady is waiting for 
me. See, she comes running out to the door, 
173 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


in the gathering dusk, with a red flower in her 
hair, and hails me with the fisherman’s greeting. 
What luck ? 

Well, this luck, at all events ! I can show you 
a few good fish, and sit down with you to a 
supper of reindeer-venison and a quiet evening 
of music and talk. 

Shall I forget thee, hospitable Stuefloten, dear- 
est to our memory of all the rustic stations in 
Norway? There are no stars beside thy name 
in the pages of Baedeker. But in the book of 
our hearts a whole constellation is thine. 

The long, low, white farmhouse stands on a 
green hill at the head of the Romsdal. A flour- 
ishing crop of grass and flowers grows on the 
stable-roof, and there is a little belfry with a 
big bell to call the labourers home from the 
fields. In the corner of the living-room of the 
old house there is a broad fireplace built across 
the angle. Curious cupboards are tucked away 
everywhere. The long table in the dining-room 
groans thrice a day with generous fare. There 
are as many kinds of hot bread as in a Virginia 
country-house; the cream is thick enough to 
make a spoon stand up in amazement; once, at 
dinner, we sat embarrassed before six different 
varieties of pudding. 


174 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 


In the evening, when the saffron light is be- 
ginning to fade, we go out and walk in the road 
before the house, looking down the long mystical 
vale of the Rauma, or up to the purple western 
hills from which the clear streams of the Ulvaa 
flow to meet us. 

Above Stuefloten the Rauma lingers and me- 
anders through a smoother and more open val- 
ley, with broad beds of gravel and flowery 
meadows. Here the trout and grayling grow 
fat and lusty, and here we angle for them, day 
after day, in water so crystalline that when 
one steps into the stream one hardly knows 
whether to expect a depth of six inches or six 
feet. 

Tiny English flies and leaders of gossamer are 
the tackle for such water in midsummer. With 
this delicate outfit, and with a light hand and a 
long line, one may easily outfish the native 
angler, and fill a twelve-pound basket every 
fair day. I remember an old Norwegian, an 
inveterate fisherman, whose footmarks we saw 
ahead of us on the stream all through an after- 
noon. Footmarks I call them; and so they 
were, literally, for there were only the prints 
of a single foot to be seen on the banks of sand, 
and between them, a series of small, round, 
deep holes. 


175 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


“What kind of a bird made those marks, 
Frederik?” I asked my faithful guide. 

“That is old Pedersen,” he said, “with his 
wooden leg. He makes a dot after every step. 
We shall catch him in a little while.” 

Sure enough, about six o’clock we saw him 
standing on a grassy point, hurling his line, 
with a fat worm on the end of it, far across the 
stream, and letting it drift down with the cur- 
rent. But the water was too fine for that style 
of fishing, and the poor old fellow had but a 
half dozen little fish. My creel was already 
overflowing, so I emptied out all of the grayling 
into his bag, and went on up the river to com- 
plete my tale of trout before dark. 

And when the fishing is over, there is Gray- 
gown with the wagon, waiting at the appointed 
place under the trees, beside the road. The 
sturdy white pony trots gayly homeward. The 
pale yellow stars blossom out above the hills 
again, as they did on that first night when we 
were driving down into the Valders. Frederik 
leans over the back of the seat, telling us mar- 
vellous tales, in his broken English, of the fish- 
ing in a certain lake among the mountains, and 
of the reindeer-shooting on the fjeld beyond it. 

“It is sad that you go to-morrow,” says he; 
“but you come back another year, I think, to 
176 


A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON 

fish in that lake, and to shoot those rein- 
deer.” 

Yes, Frederik, we are coming back to Norway 
some day, perhaps, — who can tell? It is one 
of the hundred places that we are vaguely plan- 
ning to revisit. For, though we did not see 
the midnight sun there, we saw the honeymoon 
most distinctly. And it was bright enough to 
take pictures by its light. 


177 







WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 


“My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sun- 
shine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it 
were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take from all their beauty 
and enjoy their glory .” — Richard Jefferies: The Life of the Fields. 


WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 

TT was the little lad that asked the question; 

and the answer also, as you will see, was 
mainly his. 

We had been keeping Sunday afternoon to- 
gether in our favourite fashion, following out 
that pleasant text which tells us to “behold the 
fowls of the air.” There is no injunction of 
Holy Writ less burdensome in acceptance, or 
more profitable in obedience, than this easy 
out-of-doors commandment. For several hours 
we walked in the way of this precept, through 
the untangled woods that lie behind the Forest 
Hills Lodge, where a pair of pigeon-hawks had 
their nest; and around the brambly shores of 
the small pond, where Maryland yellow-throats 
and song-sparrows were settled; and under the 
lofty hemlocks of the fragment of forest across 
the road, where rare warblers flitted silently 
among the tree-tops. The light beneath the 
evergreens was growing dim as we came out 
from their shadow into the widespread glow of 
the sunset, on the edge of a grassy hill, overlook- 
181 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


in g the long valley of the Gale River, and up- 
looking to the Franconia Mountains. 

It was the benediction hour. The placid air 
of the day shed a new tranquillity over the con- 
soling landscape. The heart of the earth seemed 
to taste a repose more perfect than that of 
common days. A hermit-thrush, far up the 
vale, sang his vesper hymn; while the swallows, 
seeking their evening meal, circled above the 
river-fields without an effort, twittering softly, 
now and then, as if they must give thanks. 
Slight and indefinable touches in the scene, per- 
haps the mere absence of the tiny human figures 
passing along the road or labouring in the dis- 
tant meadows, perhaps the blue curls of smoke 
rising lazily from the farmhouse chimneys, or 
the family groups sitting under the maple-trees 
before the door, diffused a sabbath atmosphere 
over the world. 

Then said the lad, lying on the grass beside 
me, “Father, who owns the mountains?” 

I happened to have heard, the day before, of 
two or three lumber companies that had bought 
some of the woodland slopes; so I told him their 
names, adding that there were probably a good 
many different owners, whose claims taken all 
together would cover the whole Franconia range 
of hills. 


182 


WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 


“Well,” answered the lad, after a moment of 
silence, “I don’t see what difference that makes. 
Everybody can look at them.” 

They lay stretched out before us in the level 
sunlight, the sharp peaks outlined against the 
sky, the vast ridges of forest sinking smoothly 
towards the valleys, the deep hollows gathering 
purple shadows in their bosoms, and the little 
foothills standing out in rounded promontories 
of brighter green from the darker mass behind 
them. 

Far to the east, the long comb of Twin Moun- 
tain extended itself back into the untrodden 
wilderness. Mount Garfield lifted a clear-cut 
pyramid through the translucent air. The huge 
bulk of Lafayette ascended majestically in front 
of us, crowned with a rosy diadem of rocks. 
Eagle Cliff and Bald Mountain stretched their 
line of scalloped peaks across the entrance to 
the Notch. Beyond that shadowy vale, the 
swelling summits of Cannon Mountain rolled 
away to meet the tumbling waves of Kinsman, 
dominated by one loftier crested billow that 
seemed almost ready to curl and break out of 
green silence into snowy foam. Far down the 
sleeping Landaff valley the undulating dome of 
Moosilauke trembled in the distant blue. 

They were all ours, from crested cliff to wooded 
183 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


base. The solemn groves of firs and spruces, 
the plumed sierras of lofty pines, the stately pil- 
lared forests of birch and beech, the wild ravines, 
the tremulous thickets of silvery poplar, the 
bare peaks with their wide outlooks, and the 
cool vales resounding with the ceaseless song of 
little rivers, — we knew and loved them all; 
they ministered peace and joy to us; they were 
all ours, though we held no title deeds and our 
ownership had never been recorded. 

What is property, after all? The law says 
there are two kinds, real and personal. But it 
seems to me that the only real property is that 
which is truly personal, that which we take into 
our inner life and make our own forever, by 
understanding and admiration and sympathy 
and love. This is the only kind of possession 
that is worth anything. 

A gallery of great paintings adorns the house 
of the Honourable Midas Bond, and every 
year adds a new treasure to his collection. He 
knows how much they cost him, and he keeps 
the run of the quotations at the auction sales, 
congratulating himself as the price of the works 
of his well-chosen artists rises in the scale, and 
the value of his art treasures is enhanced. But 
why should he call them his ? He is only their 
custodian. He keeps them well varnished and 
184 


WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 

framed in gilt. But he never passes through 
those gilded frames into the world of beauty 
that lies behind the painted canvas. He knows 
nothing of those lovely places from which the 
artist’s soul and hand have drawn their inspira- 
tion. They are closed and barred to him. He 
has bought the pictures, but he cannot buy the 
key. The poor art student who wanders through 
his gallery, lingering with awe and love before 
the masterpieces, owns them far more truly 
than Midas does. 

Pomposus Silverman purchased a rich library 
a few years ago. The books were rare and 
costly. That was the reason why Pomposus 
bought them. He was proud to feel that he 
was the possessor of literary treasures which 
were not to be found in the houses of his wealthi- 
est acquaintances. But the threadbare Biicher- 
freund, who was engaged at a slender salary to 
catalogue the library and take care of it, be- 
came the real proprietor. Pomposus paid for 
the books, but Biicherfreund enjoyed them. 

I do not mean to say that the possession of 
much money is always a barrier to real wealth 
of mind and heart. Nor would I maintain that 
all the poor of this world are rich in faith and 
heirs of the kingdom. But some of them are. 
And if some of the rich of this world (through 
185 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


the grace of Him with whom all things are pos- 
sible) are also modest in their tastes, and gentle 
in their hearts, and open in their minds, and 
ready to be pleased with unbought pleasures, 
they simply share in the best things which are 
provided for all. 

I speak not now of the strife that men wage 
over the definition and the laws of property. 
Doubtless there is much here that needs to be 
set right. There are men and women in the 
world who are shut out from the right to earn 
a living, so poor that they must perish for want 
of daily bread, so full of misery that there is no 
room for the tiniest seed of joy in their lives. 
This is the lingering shame of civilization. Some 
day, perhaps, we shall find the way to banish 
it. Some day, every man shall have his title 
to a share in the world’s great work and the 
world’s large joy. 

But meantime it is certain that, where there 
are a hundred poor bodies who suffer from 
physical privation, there are a thousand poor 
souls who suffer from spiritual poverty. To 
relieve this greater suffering there needs no 
change of laws, only a change of heart. 

What does it profit a man to be the landed 
proprietor of countless acres unless he can reap 
the harvest of delight that blooms from every 
186 


WHO OWNS THE MOUNTAINS? 

rood of God’s earth for the seeing eye and the 
loving spirit? And who can reap that harvest 
so closely that there shall not be abundant 
gleaning left for all mankind? The most that 
a wide estate can yield to its legal owner is a 
living. But the real owner can gather from a 
field of goldenrod, shining in the August sun- 
light, an unearned increment of delight. 

We measure success by accumulation. The 
measure is false. The true measure is appre- 
ciation. He who loves most has most. 

How foolishly we train ourselves for the work 
of life ! We give our most arduous and eager 
efforts to the cultivation of those faculties which 
will serve us in the competitions of the forum 
and the market-place. But if we were wise, we 
should care infinitely more for the unfolding of 
those inward, secret, spiritual powers by which 
alone we can become the owners of anything 
that is worth having. Surely God is the great 
proprietor. Yet all His works He has given 
away. He holds no title-deeds. The one thing 
that is His, is the perfect understanding, the 
perfect joy, the perfect love, of all things that 
He has made. To a share in this high owner- 
ship He welcomes all who are poor in spirit. 
This is the earth which the meek inherit. This 
is the patrimony of the saints in light. 

187 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


“Come, laddie,” I said to my comrade, “let 
us go home. You and I are very rich. We 
own the mountains. But we can never sell 
them, and we don’t want to.” 


188 



\ 

A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 











“ Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sus- 
tained by 'perpetual neglect of many other things. And it is not by any 
means certain that a man's business is the most important thing he has 
to do ” — Robert Louis Stevenson: An Apology for Idlers. 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

I 

A CASUAL INTRODUCTION 

/YN the South Shore of Long Island, all 
things incline to a natural somnolence. 
There are no ambitious mountains, no braggart 
cliffs, no hasty torrents, no bustling waterfalls 
in that land, 

“In which it seemeth always afternoon” 

The salt meadows sleep in the summer sun; the 
farms and market-gardens yield a placid harvest 
to a race of singularly unhurried tillers of the 
soil; the low hills rise with gentle slopes, not 
caring to get too high in the world, only far 
enough to catch a pleasant glimpse of the sea 
and a breath of salt air; the very trees grow 
leisurely, as if they felt that they had “all the 
time there is.” And from this dreamy land, 
close as it lies to the unresting ocean, the tumult 
of the breakers and the foam of ever-turning 
tides are shut off by the languid lagoons of the 
Great South Bay and a long range of dunes, 
191 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

crested with wire-grass, bay-bushes, and wild- 
roses. 

In such a country you could not expect a 
little brook to be noisy, fussy, energetic. If it 
were not lazy, it would be out of keeping. 

But the actual and undisguised idleness of 
this particular brook was another affair, and one 
in which it was distinguished among its fellows. 
For almost all the other little rivers of the 
South Shore, lazy as they may be by nature, 
yet manage to do some kind of work before they 
finish the journey from their J crystal-clear 
springs into the brackish waters of the bay. 
They turn the wheels of sleepy gristmills, while 
the miller sits with his hands in his pockets un- 
derneath the willow-trees. They fill reservoirs 
out of which great steam-engines pump the 
water to quench the thirst of Brooklyn. Even 
the smaller streams tarry long enough in their 
seaward sauntering to irrigate a few cranberry- 
bogs and so provide that savoury sauce which 
makes the Long Island turkey a fitter subject 
for Thanksgiving. 

But this brook of which I speak did none of 
these useful things. It was absolutely out of 
business. There was not a mill, nor a reservoir, 
nor a cranberry-bog, on all its course of a short 
mile. The only profitable affair it ever un- 
192 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

dertook was to fill a small ice-pond near its 
entrance into the Great South Bay. You could 
hardly call this a very energetic enterprise. It 
amounted to little more than a good-natured 
consent to allow itself to be used by the winter 
for the making of ice, if the winter happened to 
be cold enough. Even this passive industry 
came to nothing; for the water, being separated 
from the bay only by a short tideway under a 
wooden bridge on the south country road, was 
too brackish to freeze easily; and the ice, being 
pervaded with weeds, was not much relished by 
the public. So the wooden ice-house, innocent 
of paint, and toned by the weather to a soft, 
sad-coloured gray, stood like an improvised 
ruin among the pine-trees beside the pond. 

It was through this unharvested ice-pond, this 
fallow field of water, that my lady Graygown 
and I entered on acquaintance with our lazy, 
idle brook. We had a house, that summer, a 
few miles down the bay. But it was a very 
small house, and the room that we like best 
was put of doors. So we spent much time in a 
sailboat, — by name “The Patience,” — making 
voyages of exploration into watery corners and 
byways. Sailing past the wooden bridge one 
day, when a strong east wind had made a very 
low tide, we observed the water flowing out be- 
193 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


neath the road with an eddying current. We 
were interested to discover where such a stream 
came from. But the sailboat could not go un- 
der the bridge, nor even make a landing on the 
shore without risk of getting aground. The 
next day we came back in a rowboat to follow 
the clue of curiosity. The tide was high now, 
and we passed with the reversed current under 
the bridge, almost bumping our heads against 
the timbers. Emerging upon the pond, we 
rowed across its shallow, weed-encumbered wa- 
ters, and were introduced without ceremony to 
one of the most agreeable brooks that we had 
ever met. 

It was quite broad where it came into the 
pond, — a hundred feet from side to side, — bor- 
dered with flags and rushes and feathery meadow 
grasses. The real channel meandered in sweep- 
ing curves from bank to bank, and the water, 
except in the swifter current, was filled with an 
amazing quantity of some aquatic moss. The 
woods came straggling down on either shore. 
There were fallen trees in the stream here and 
there. On one of the points an old swamp- 
maple, with its decrepit branches and its leaves 
already touched with the hectic colours of de- 
cay, hung far out over the water which was 
undermining it, looking and leaning downward, 
194 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

like an aged man who bends, half-sadly and half- 
willingly, towards the grave. 

But for the most part the brook lay wide 
open to the sky, and the tide, rising and sink- 
ing somewhat irregularly in the pond below, 
made curious alternations in its depth and in 
the swiftness of its current. For about half a 
mile we navigated this lazy little river, and then 
we found that rowing would carry us no farther, 
for we came to a place where the stream issued 
with a livelier flood from an archway in a 
thicket. 

This woodland portal was not more than four 
feet wide, and the branches of the small trees 
were closely interwoven overhead. We shipped 
the oars and took one of them for a paddle. 
Stooping down, we pushed the boat through the 
archway and found ourselves in the Fairy DelL 
It was a long, narrow bower, perhaps four hun- 
dred feet from end to end, with the brook danc- 
ing through it in a joyous, musical flow over a 
bed of clean yellow sand and white pebbles. 
There were deep places in the curves where you 
could hardly touch bottom with an oar, and 
shallow places in the straight runs where the 
boat would barely float. Not a ray of un- 
broken sunlight leaked through the green roof 
of this winding corridor; and all along the sides 
195 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


there were delicate mosses and tall ferns and 
wildwood flowers that love the shade. 

At the upper end of the bower our progress 
in the boat was barred by a low bridge, on a 
forgotten road that wound through the pine- 
woods. Here I left my lady Graygown, seated 
on the shady corner of the bridge with a book, 
swinging her feet over the stream, while I set 
out to explore its further course. Above the 
wood-road there were no more fairy dells, nor 
easy-going estuaries. The water came down 
through the most complicated piece of under- 
brush that I have ever encountered. Alders 
and swamp maples and pussy-willows and gray 
birches grew together in a wild confusion. 
Blackberry bushes and fox-grapes and cat-briers 
trailed and twisted themselves in an incredible 
tangle. There was only one way to advance, 
and that was to wade in the middle of the 
brook, stooping low, lifting up the pendulous 
alder-branches, threading a tortuous course, 
now under and now over the innumerable ob- 
stacles, as a darning-needle is pushed in and 
out through the yarn of a woollen stocking. 

It was dark and lonely in that difflcult pas- 
sage. The brook divided into many channels, 
turning this way and that way, as if it were lost 
in the woods. There were huge clumps of Os- 
196 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

munda regalis spreading their fronds in tropical 
profusion. Mouldering logs were covered with 
moss. The water gurgled slowly into deep 
corners under the banks. Catbirds and blue 
jays fluttered screaming from the thickets. 
Cotton-tailed rabbits darted away, showing the 
white flag of fear. Once I thought I saw the 
fuscous gleam of a red fox stealing silently 
through the brush. It would have been no 
surprise to hear the bark of a raccoon, or see 
the eyes of a wildcat gleaming through the 
leaves. 

For more than an hour I was pushing my way 
through this miniature wilderness of half a mile; 
and then I emerged suddenly, to find myself 
face to face with a railroad embankment and 
the afternoon express, with its parlour-cars, 
thundering down to Southampton ! 

It was a strange and startling contrast. The 
explorer’s joy, the sense of adventure, the feel- 
ing of wildness and freedom, withered and crum- 
pled somewhat preposterously at the sight of 
the parlour-cars. My scratched hands and wet 
boots and torn coat seemed unkempt and dis- 
reputable. Perhaps some of the well-dressed 
people looking out at the windows of the train 
were the friends with whom we were to dine 
on Saturday. Bateche ! What would they say 
197 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


to such a costume as mine? What did I care 
what they said ! 

But, all the same, it was a shock, a disen- 
chantment, to find that civilization, with all its 
absurdities and conventionalities, was so threat- 
eningly close to my new-found wilderness. My 
first enthusiasm was not a little chilled as I 
walked back, along an open woodland path, to 
the bridge where Graygown was placidly read- 
ing. Reading, I say, though her book was 
closed, and her brown eyes were wandering over 
the green leaves of the thicket and the white 
clouds drifting, drifting lazily across the blue 
deep of the sky. 

II 

A BETTER ACQUAINTANCE 

On the voyage home, she gently talked me 
out of my disappointment, and into a wiser 
frame of mind. 

It was a surprise, of course, she admitted, to 
find that our wilderness was so little, and to 
discover the trail of a parlour-car on the edge 
of Paradise. But why not turn the surprise 
around, and make it pleasant instead of disagree- 
able? Why not look at the contrast from the 
side that we liked best ? 

198 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

It was not necessary that everybody should 
take the same view of life that pleased us. The 
world would not get on very well without peo- 
ple who preferred parlour-cars to canoes, and 
patent-leather shoes to India-rubber boots, and 
ten-course dinners to picnics in the woods. 
These good people were unconsciously toiling at 
the hard and necessary work of life in order that 
we, of the chosen and fortunate few, should be 
at liberty to enjoy the best things in the world. 

Why should we neglect our opportunities, 
which were also our real duties? The nervous 
disease of civilization might prevail all around 
us, but that ought not to destroy our grateful 
enjoyment of the lucid intervals that were 
granted to us by a merciful Providence. 

Why should we not take this little untamed 
brook, running its humble course through the 
borders of civilized life and midway between 
two flourishing summer resorts, — a brook with- 
out a single house or a cultivated field on its 
banks, as free and beautiful and secluded as if 
it flowed through miles of trackless forest, — why 
not take this brook as a sign that the ordering 
of the universe had a “good intention” even for 
inveterate idlers, and that the great Arranger 
of the world felt some kindness for such gipsy- 
hearts as ours? What law, human or divine, 
199 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


was there to prevent us from making this stream 
our symbol of deliverance from the conventional 
and commonplace, our guide to liberty and a 
quiet mind ? 

So reasoned Graygown with her 
* 4 most silver flow 

Of subtle-paced counsel in distress” 

And, according to her word, so did we. That 
lazy, idle brook became to us one of the best of 
friends; the pathfinder of happiness on many a 
bright summer day; and, through long vaca- 
tions, the faithful encourager of indolence. 

Indolence in the proper sense of the word, you 
understand. The meaning which is commonly 
given to it, as Archbishop Trench pointed out 
in his suggestive book about Words and Their 
Uses , is altogether false. To speak of indolence 
as if it were a vice is just a great big verbal 
slander. 

Indolence is a virtue. It comes from two 
Latin words, which mean freedom from anxiety 
or grief. And that is a wholesome state of 
mind. There are times and seasons when it is 
even a pious and blessed state of mind. Not 
to be in a hurry; not to be ambitious or jealous 
or resentful; not to feel envious of anybody; 
not to fret about to-day nor worry about to- 
morrow, — that is the way we ought all to feel 
200 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

at some time in our lives; and that is the kind 
of indolence in which our brook faithfully en- 
couraged us. 

’T is an age in which such encouragement is 
greatly needed. We have fallen so much into 
the habit of being always busy that we know 
not how nor when to break it off with firmness. 
Our business tags after us into the midst of our 
pleasures, and we are ill at ease beyond reach 
of the telegraph and the daily newspaper. We 
agitate ourselves amazingly about a multitude 
of affairs, — the politics of Europe, the state of 
the weather all around the globe, the marriages 
and festivities of very rich people, and the 
latest novelties in crime, none of which are of 
vital interest to us. The more earnest souls 
among us are cultivating a vicious tendency to 
Summer Schools, and Seaside Institutes of Phi- 
losophy, and Mountaintop Seminaries of Mod- 
ern Languages. 

We toil assiduously to cram something more 
into those scrap-bags of knowledge which we 
fondly call our minds. Seldom do we rest 
tranquil long enough to find out whether there 
is anything in them already that is of real value, 
— any native feeling, any original thought, 
which would like to come out and sun itself for 
a while in quiet. 

For my part, I am sure that I stand more in 
201 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


need of a deeper sense of contentment with life 
than of a knowledge of the Bulgarian tongue, 
and that all the paradoxes of Hegel would not 
do me so much good as one hour of vital sym- 
pathy with the careless play of children. The 
Marquis du Paty de l’Huitre may espouse the 
daughter and heiress of the Honourable James 
Bulger with all imaginable pomp, if he will. 
Qa ne m intrigue 'point du tout . I would rather 
stretch myself out on the grass and watch yon- 
der pair of kingbirds carrying luscious flies to 
their young ones in the nest, or chasing away 
the marauding crow with shrill cries of anger. 

What a pretty battle it is, and in a good cause, 
too ! Waste no pity on that big black ruffian. 
He is a villain and a thief, an egg-stealer, an 
ogre, a devourer of unfledged innocents. The 
kingbirds are not afraid of him, knowing that 
he is a coward at heart. They fly upon him, 
now from below, now from above. They buffet 
him from one side and from the other. They 
circle round him like a pair of swift gunboats 
round an antiquated man-of-war. They even 
perch upon his back and dash their beaks into 
his neck and pluck feathers from his piratical 
plumage. At last his lumbering flight has car- 
ried him far enough away, and the brave little 
defenders fly back to the nest, poising above it 
202 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

on quivering wings for a moment, then dipping 
down swiftly in pursuit of some passing insect. 
The war is over. Courage has had its turn. 
Now tenderness comes into play. The young 
birds, all ignorant of the passing danger, but 
always conscious of an insatiable hunger, are 
uttering loud remonstrances and plaintive de- 
mands for food. Domestic life begins again, 
and they that sow not, neither gather into 
barns, are fed. 

Do you suppose that this wondrous stage of 
earth was set, and all the myriad actors on it 
taught to play their parts, without a spectator 
in view? Do you think that there is anything 
better for you and me to do, now and then, 
than to sit down quietly in a humble seat, and 
watch a few scenes in the drama? Has it not 
something to say to us, and do we not under- 
stand it best when we have a peaceful heart 
and free from dolor? That is what in-dolence 
means, and there are no better teachers of it 
than the light-hearted birds and untoiling 
flowers, commended by the wisest of all masters 
to our consideration; nor can we find a more 
pleasant pedagogue to lead us to their school 
than a small, merry brook. 

And this was what our chosen stream did for 
£03 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


us. It was always luring us away from an arti- 
ficial life into restful companionship with nature. 

Suppose, for example, we found ourselves 
growing a bit dissatisfied with the domestic ar- 
rangements of our little cottage, and coveting 
the splendours of a grander establishment. An 
afternoon on the brook was a good cure for that 
folly. Or suppose a day came when there was 
an imminent prospect of many formal calls. 
We had an important engagement up the brook; 
and while we kept it we could think with satis- 
faction of the joy of our callers when they dis- 
covered that they could discharge their whole 
duty with a piece of pasteboard. This was an 
altruistic pleasure. Or suppose that a few 
friends were coming to supper, and there were 
no flowers for the supper-table. We could 
easily have bought them in the village. But it 
was far more to our liking to take the children 
up the brook, and come back with great bunches 
of wild white honeysuckle and blue flag, or 
posies of arrow-heads and cardinal-flowers. Or 
suppose that I was very unwisely and reluctantly 
labouring at some serious piece of literary work, 
promised for the next number of The Scribbler's 
Review ; and suppose that in the midst of this 
labour the sad news came to me that the fish- 
man had forgotten to leave any fish at our cot- 
204 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

tage that morning. Should my innocent babes 
and my devoted wife be left to perish of star- 
vation while I continued my poetical comparison 
of the two Williams, Shakspeare and Watson? 
Inhuman selfishness ! Of course it was my 
plain duty to sacrifice my inclinations, and get 
my fly-rod, and row away across the bay, with 
a deceptive appearance of cheerfulness, to catch 
a basket of trout in 


III 

THE SECRETS OF INTIMACY 

There ! I came within eight letters of telling 
the name of the brook, a thing that I am firmly 
resolved not to do. If it were an ordinary fish- 
less little river, or even a stream with nothing 
better than grass-pike and sunfish in it, you 
should have the name and welcome. But when 
a brook contains speckled trout, and when their 
presence is known to a very few persons who 
guard the secret as the dragon guarded the 
golden apples of the Hesperides, and when the 
size of the trout is large beyond the dreams of 
hope, — well, when did you know a true angler 
who would willingly give away the name of 
such a brook as that? You may find an en- 
courager of indolence in almost any stream of 
205 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


the South Side, and I wish you joy of your brook. 
But if you want to catch trout in mine you 
must discover it for yourself, or perhaps go 
with me some day, and solemnly swear secrecy. 

That was the way in which the freedom of 
the stream was conferred upon me. There was 
a small boy in the village, the son of rich but 
respectable parents, and an inveterate all-round 
sportsman, aged fourteen years, with whom I 
had formed a close intimacy. I was telling him 
about the pleasure of exploring the idle brook, 
and expressing the opinion that in bygone days, 
(in that mythical “ forty years ago” when all 
fishing was good), there must have been trout 
in it. A certain look came over the boy’s face. 
He gazed at me solemnly, as if he were searching 
the inmost depths of my character before he 
spoke. 

“Say, do you want to know something?” 

I assured him that an increase of knowledge 
was the chief aim of my life. 

“Do you promise you won’t tell?” 

I expressed my readiness to be bound to 
silence by the most awful pledge that the law 
would sanction. 

“Wish you may die?” 

I not only wished that I might die, but was 
perfectly certain that I would die. 

206 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

“Well, what’s the matter with catching trout 
in that brook now? Do you want to go with 
me next Saturday? I saw four or five bully 
ones last week, and got three.” 

On the appointed day we made the voyage, 
landed at the upper bridge, walked around by the 
woodpath to the railroad embankment, and be- 
gan to worm our way down through the tangled 
wilderness. Fly-fishing, of course, was out of 
the question. The only possible method of 
angling was to let the line, baited with a juicy 
“garden hackle,” drift down the current as far 
as possible before you, under the alder-branches 
and the cat-briers, into the holes and corners of 
the stream. Then, if there came a gentle tug 
on the rod, you must strike, to one side or the 
other, as the branches might allow, and trust 
wholly to luck for a chance to play the fish. 
Many a trout we lost that day, — the largest 
ones, of course, — and many a hook was em- 
bedded in a sunken log, or hopelessly entwined 
among the boughs overhead. But when we 
came out at the bridge, very wet and disheveled, 
we had seven pretty fish, the heaviest about 
half a pound. The Fairy Dell yielded a brace 
of smaller ones, and altogether we were reason- 
ably happy as we took up the oars and pushed 
out upon the open stream. 

207 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


But if there were fish above, why should there 
not be fish below? It was about sunset, the 
angler’s golden hour. We were already com- 
mitted to the crime of being late for supper. 
It would add little to our guilt and much to our 
pleasure to drift slowly down the middle of the 
brook and cast the artful fly in the deeper cor- 
ners on either shore. So I took off the vulgar 
bait-hook and put on a delicate leader with a 
Queen of the Water for a tail-fly and a Yellow 
Sally for a dropper, — innocent little confec- 
tions of feathers and tinsel, dressed on the 
tiniest hooks, and calculated to tempt the appe- 
tite or the curiosity of the most capricious 
trout. 

For a long time the whipping of the water 
produced no result, and it seemed as if the dainty 
style of angling were destined to prove less 
profitable than plain fishing with a worm. But 
presently we came to an elbow of the brook, 
just above the estuary, where there was quite a 
stretch of clear water along the lower side, with 
two half -sunken logs sticking out from the bank, 
against which the current had drifted a broad 
raft of weeds. I made a long cast, and sent the 
tail-fly close to the edge of the weeds. There 
was a swelling ripple on the surface of the water, 
and a noble fish darted from under the logs, 
208 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

dashed at the fly, missed it, and whirled back 
to his shelter. 

“Gee!” said the boy, “that was a whacker! 
He made a wake like a steamboat.” 

It was a moment for serious thought. What 
was best to be done with that fish ? Leave him 
to settle down for the night and come back 
after him another day? Or try another cast 
for him at once? A fish on Saturday evening 
is worth two on Monday morning. I changed 
the Queen of the Water for a Royal Coachman 
tied on a number fourteen hook, — white wings, 
peacock body with a belt of crimson silk, — and 
sent it out again, a foot farther up the stream 
and a shade closer to the weeds. As it settled 
on the water, there was a flash of gold from 
the shadow beneath the logs, and a quick turn 
of the wrist made the tiny hook fast in the fish. 
He fought wildly to get back to the shelter of 
his logs, but the four ounce rod had spring 
enough in it to hold him firmly away from that 
dangerous retreat. Then he splurged up and 
down the open water, and made fierce dashes 
among the grassy shallows, and seemed about to 
escape a dozen times. But at last his force 
was played out; he came slowly towards the 
boat, turning on his side, and I netted him in 
my hat. 


209 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


“Bully for us;” said the boy, “we got him! 
What a dandy !” 

It was indeed one of the handsomest fish that 
I have ever taken on the South Side, — just short 
of two pounds and a quarter, — small head, 
broad tail, and well-rounded sides coloured with 
orange and blue and gold and red. A pair of 
the same kind, one weighing two pounds and 
the other a pound and three quarters, were 
taken by careful fishing down the lower end of 
the pool, and then we rowed home through the 
dusk, pleasantly convinced that there is no 
virtue more certainly rewarded than the pa- 
tience of anglers, and entirely willing to put up 
with a cold supper and a mild reproof for the 
sake of sport. 

Of course we could not resist the temptation 
to show those fish to the neighbours. But, 
equally of course, we evaded the request to 
give precise information as to the precise place 
where they were caught. Indeed, I fear that 
there must have been something confused in 
our description of where we had been on that 
afternoon. Our carefully selected language may 
have been open to misunderstanding. At all 
events, the next day, which was the Sabbath, 
there was a row of eager but unprincipled anglers 
sitting on a bridge over another stream , and fish- 
210 


A LAZY, IDLE BROOK 

ing for trout with worms and large expectations, 
but without visible results. 

The boy and I agreed that if this did not 
teach a good moral lesson it was not our fault. 

I obtained the boy’s consent to admit the 
partner of my life’s joys and two of our children 
to the secret of the brook, and thereafter, when 
we visited it, we took the fly-rod with us. If 
by chance another boat passed us in the estuary, 
we were never fishing, but only gathering flowers, 
or going for a picnic, or taking photographs. 
But when the uninitiated ones had passed by, 
we would get out the rod again, and try a few 
more casts. 

One day in particular I remember, when 
Graygown and little Teddy were my companions. 
We really had no hopes of angling, for the hour 
was mid-noon, and the day was warm and still. 
But suddenly the trout, by one of those unac- 
countable freaks which make their disposition 
so interesting and attractive, began to rise all 
about us in a bend of the stream. 

“Look !” said Teddy; “wherever you see one 
of those big smiles on the water, I believe there’s 
a fish!” 

Fortunately the rod was at hand. Graygown 
and Teddy managed the boat and the landing- 
net with consummate skill. We landed no less 
211 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


than a dozen beautiful fish at that most un- 
likely hour and then solemnly shook hands all 
around. 

There is a peculiar pleasure in doing a thing 
like this, catching trout in a place where nobody 
thinks of looking for them, and at an hour when 
everybody believes they cannot be caught. It 
is more fun to take one good fish out of an old, 
fished-out stream, near at hand to the village, 
than to fill a basket from some far-famed and 
well-stocked water. It is the unexpected touch 
that tickles our sense of pleasure. While life 
lasts, we are always hoping for it and expecting 
it. There is no country so civilized, no existence 
so humdrum, that there is not room enough in 
it somewhere for a lazy, idle brook, an encour- 
ager of indolence, with hope of happy surprises. 


212 


THE OPEN FIRE 


“It is a vulgar notion that afire is only for heat. A chief value of it is, 
however, to look at. And it is never twice the same .” — Charles Dudley 
Warner: Backlog Studies. 


THE OPEN FIRE 

I 

LIGHTING UP 

A/TAN is the animal that has made friends 
^ ^ with the fire. 

All the other creatures, in their natural state, 
are afraid of it. They look upon it with won- 
der and dismay. It fascinates them, sometimes, 
with its glittering eyes in the night. The squir- 
rels and the hares come pattering softly towards 
it through the underbrush around the new 
camp. The fascinated deer stares into the 
blaze of the jack-light while the hunter’s canoe 
creeps through the lily-pads. But the charm 
that masters them is one of dread, not of love. 
It is the witchcraft of the serpent’s lambent 
look. When they know what it means, when 
the heat of the fire touches them, or even when 
its smell comes clearly to their most delicate 
sense, they recognize it as their enemy, the 
Wild Huntsman whose red hounds can follow, 
follow for days without wearying, growing 
stronger and more furious with every turn of 
215 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


the chase. Let but a trail of smoke drift down 
the wind across the forest, and all the game 
for miles and miles will catch the signal for 
fear and flight. 

Many of the animals have learned how to 
make houses for themselves. The cabane of the 
beaver is a wonder of neatness and comfort, 
much preferable to the wigwam of his Indian 
hunter. The muskrat knows how thick and 
high to build the dome of his waterside cottage, 
in order to protect himself against the frost of 
the coming winter and the floods of the follow- 
ing spring. The woodchuck’s house has two 
or three doors; and the squirrel’s dwelling is 
provided with a good bed and a convenient 
storehouse for nuts and acorns. The sportive 
otters have a toboggan slide in front of their 
residence; and the moose in winter make a 
“yard,” where they can take exercise comfort- 
ably and find shelter for sleep. But there is 
one thing lacking in all these various dwellings, 
— a fireplace. 

Man is the only creature that dares to light 
a fire and to live with it. The reason? Be- 
cause he alone has learned how to put it out. 

It is true that two of his humbler friends have 
been converted to fire-worship. The dog and 
the cat, being half-humanized, have begun to 
216 


THE OPEN FIRE 

love the fire. I suppose that a cat seldom comes 
so near to feeling a true sense of affection as 
when she has finished her saucer of bread and 
milk, and stretched herself luxuriously under- 
neath the kitchen stove, while her faithful mis- 
tress washes up the dishes. As for a dog, I 
am sure that his admiring love for his master 
is never greater than when they come in to- 
gether from the hunt, wet and tired, and the 
man gathers a pile of wood in front of the tent, 
touches it with a tiny magic wand, and suddenly 
the clear, consoling flame springs up, saying 
cheerfully, “Here we are, at home in the forest; 
come into the warmth; rest, and eat, and sleep.” 
When the weary, shivering dog sees this mir- 
acle, he knows that his master is a great man 
and a lord of things. 

After all, that is the only real open fire. 
Wood is the fuel for it. Out-of-doors is the 
place for it. A furnace is an underground prison 
for a toiling slave. A stove is a cage for a 
tame bird. Even a broad hearthstone and a 
pair of glittering andirons — the best ornament 
of a room — must be accepted as an imitation of 
the real thing. The veritable open fire is built 
in the open, with the whole earth for a fire 
place and the sky for a chimney. 

To start a fire in the open is by no means as 
217 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


easy as it looks. It is one of those simple tricks 
that every one thinks he can perform until he 
tries it. 

To do it without trying, — accidentally and un- 
willingly, — that, of course, is a thing for which 
any fool is fit. You knock out the ashes from 
your pipe on a fallen log; you toss the end of a 
match into a patch of grass, green on top, but 
dry as punk underneath; you scatter the dead 
brands of an old fire among the moss, — a con- 
flagration is under way before you know it. 

A wood-fire in the open is one thing; a comfort 
and a joy. Fire in the woods is another thing; a 
terror, an uncontrollable fury, a burning shame. 

But the lighting up of a proper fire, kindly, 
approachable, serviceable, docile, is a work of 
intelligence. If, perhaps, you have to do it 
in the rain, with a single match, it requires no 
little art and skill. 

There is plenty of wood everywhere, but not 
a bit to burn. The fallen trees are waterlogged. 
The dead leaves are as damp as grief. The 
charred sticks that you find in an old fireplace 
are absolutely incombustible. Do not trust the 
handful of withered twigs and branches that 
you gather from the spruce-trees. They seem 
dry, but they are little better for your purpose 
than so much asbestos. You make a pile of 
218 


THE OPEN FIRE 


them in some apparently suitable hollow, and 
lay a few larger sticks on top. Then you hastily 
scratch your solitary match on the seat of your 
trousers and thrust it into the pile of twigs. 
What happens? The wind whirls around in 
your stupid little hollow, and the blue flame of 
the sulphur spirts and sputters for an instant, 
and then goes out. Or perhaps there is a mo- 
ment of stillness; the match flares up bravely; 
the nearest twigs catch fire, crackling and 
sparkling; you hurriedly lay on more sticks; 
but the fire deliberately dodges them, creeps 
to the corner of the pile where the twigs are 
fewest and dampest, snaps feebly a few times, 
and expires in smoke. Now where are you? 
How far is it to the nearest match ? 

If you are wise, you will always lay your fire 
before you light it. Time is never saved by 
doing a thing badly. 


II 

THE CAMP-FIRE 

In the making of fires there is as much differ- 
ence as in the building of houses. Everything 
depends upon the purpose that you have in 
view. There is the camp-fire, and the cooking- 
fire, and the smudge-fire, and the little friend- 
219 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 

ship-fire, — not to speak of other minor varieties. 
Each of these has its own proper style of archi- 
tecture, and to mix them is false art and poor 
economy. 

The object of the camp-fire is to give heat, 
and incidentally light, to your tent or shanty. 
You can hardly build this kind of a fire unless 
you have a good axe and know how to chop. 
For the first thing that you need is a solid back- 
log, the thicker the better, to hold the heat and 
reflect it into the tent. This log must not be 
too dry, or it will burn out quickly. Neither 
must it be too damp, else it will smoulder and 
discourage the fire. The best wood for it is 
the body of a yellow birch, and, next to that, a 
green balsam. It should be five or six feet 
long, and at least two and a half feet in diameter. 
If you cannot find a tree thick enough, cut two 
or three lengths of a smaller one; lay the thickest 
log on the ground first, about ten or twelve 
feet in front of the tent; drive two strong stakes 
behind it, slanting a little backward; and lay 
the other logs on top of the first, resting against 
the stakes. 

Now you are ready for the hand-chunks, or 
andirons. These are shorter sticks of wood, 
eight or ten inches thick, laid at right angles 
220 


THE OPEN FIRE 


to the backlog, four or five feet apart. Across 
these you are to build up the firewood proper. 

Use a dry spruce-tree, not one that has fallen, 
but one that is dead and still standing, if you 
want a lively, snapping fire. Use a hard maple 
or a hickory if you want a fire that will burn 
steadily and make few sparks. But if you like 
a fire to blaze up at first with a splendid flame, 
and then burn on with an enduring heat far 
into the night, a young white birch with the 
bark on is the tree to choose. Six or eight 
round sticks of this laid across the hand-chunks, 
with perhaps a few quarterings of a larger tree, 
will make a glorious fire. 

But before you put these on, you must be 
ready to light up. A few splinters of dry spruce 
or pine or balsam, stood endwise against the 
backlog, or, better still, piled up in a pyramid 
between the hand-chunks; a few strips of birch- 
bark; and one good match, — these are all that 
you want. But be sure that your match is a 
good one. It is better to see to this before 
you go into the brush. Your comfort, even 
your life, may depend on it. 

“Avec ces allumettes-la” said my guide at 
Lac St. Jean one day, as he vainly tried to light 
his pipe with a box of parlour matches from the 
221 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


hotel, — “avec ces gnognottes d’allumettes on pourra 
mourir au hois!” 

In the woods, the old-fashioned brimstone 
match of our grandfathers — the match with a 
brown head and a stout stick and a dreadful 
smell — is the best. But if you have only one, 
do not trust even that to light your fire directly. 
Use it first to touch off a roll of birch-bark 
which you hold in your hand. Then, when the 
bark is well alight, crinkling and curling, push 
it under the heap of kindlings, give the flame 
time to take a good hold, and lay your wood 
over it, a stick at a time, until the whole pile 
is blazing. Now your fire is started. Your 
friendly little red-haired gnome is ready to 
serve you through the night. 

He will dry your clothes if you are wet. He 
will cheer you up if you are despondent. He 
will diffuse an air of sociability through the 
camp, and draw the men together in a half circle 
for story-telling and jokes and singing. He will 
hold a flambeau for you while you spread your 
blankets on the boughs and dress for bed. He 
will keep you warm while you sleep, — at least 
till about three o’clock in the morning, when 
you dream that you are out sleighing in your 
pajamas, and wake up with a shiver. 

“ Hold , Ferdinand , Frangois!” you call out 
222 


THE OPEN FIRE 

from your bed, pulling the blankets over your 
ears; “ Ramanchez le feu , s'il vous plait. C’est 
un freite de chien” 


III 

THE COOKING-FIRE 

Of course such a fire as I have been describ- 
ing can be used for cooking, when it has burned 
down a little, and there is a bed of hot embers 
in front of the backlog. But a correct kitchen 
fire should be constructed after another fashion. 
What you want now is not blaze, but heat, and 
that not diffused, but concentrated. You must 
be able to get close to your fire without burning 
your boots or scorching your face. 

If you have time and the material, make a 
fireplace of big stones. But not of granite, for 
that will split with the heat, and perhaps fly in 
your face. 

If you are in a hurry and there are no suitable 
stones at hand, lay two good logs nearly parallel 
with each other, a foot or so apart, and build 
your fire between them. For a cooking-fire, 
use split wood in short sticks. Let the first 
supply burn to glowing coals before you begin. 
A frying-pan that is lukewarm one minute and 
red-hot the next is the abomination of desola- 
223 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


tion. If you want black toast, have it made 
before a fresh, sputtering, blazing heap of 
wood. 

In fires, as in men, an excess of energy is a 
lack of usefulness. The best work is done with- 
out many sparks. Just enough is the right kind 
of a fire and a feast. 

To know how to cook is not a very elegant 
accomplishment. Yet there are times and sea- 
sons when it seems to come in better than fa- 
miliarity with the dead languages, or much skill 
upon the lute. 

You cannot always rely on your guides for a 
tasteful preparation of food. Many of them 
are ignorant of the difference between frying and 
broiling, and their notion of boiling a potato or 
a fish is to reduce it to a pulp. Now and then 
you find a man who has a natural inclination to 
the culinary art, and who does very well within 
familiar limits. 

Old Edouard, the Montaignais Indian, who 
cooked for my friends H. E. G. and C. S. D. 
last summer on the Ste. Marguerite en has , was 
such a man. But Edouard could not read, and 
the only way he could tell the nature of the 
canned provisions was by the pictures on the 
cans. If the picture was strange to him, there 
was no guessing what he would do with the con- 
tents of the can. He was capable of roasting 
224 


THE OPEN FIRE 


strawberries, and serving green peas cold for 
dessert. One day a can of mullagatawny soup 
and a can of apricots Were handed out to 
him simultaneously and without explanations. 
Edouard solved the problem by opening both 
cans and cooking them together. We had a 
new soup that day, mullagatawny aux abricots. 
It was not as bad as it sounds. It tasted some- 
what like chutney. 

The real reason why food that is cooked over 
an open fire tastes so good to us is because we 
are really hungry when we get it. The man 
who puts up provisions for camp has a great 
advantage over the dealers who must satisfy 
the pampered appetite of people in houses. I 
never can get any bacon in New York like that 
which I buy at a little shop in Quebec to take 
into the woods. If I ever set up in the grocery 
business, I shall try to get a good trade among 
anglers. It will be easy to please my customers. 

The reputation that trout enjoy as a food- 
fish is partly due to the fact that they are usually 
cooked over an open fire. In the city they 
never taste as good. It is not merely a differ- 
ence in freshness. It is a change in the sauce. 
If the truth must be told, even by an angler, 
there are at least five salt-water fish which are 
better than trout, — to eat. There is none 
better to catch. 


225 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


IV 

THE SMUDGE-FIRE 

But enough of the cooking-fire. Let us turn 
now to the subject of the smudge, known in 
Lower Canada as la boucane. The smudge owes 
its existence to the pungent mosquito, the san- 
guinary black-fly, and the peppery midge , — le 
maringouin, la moustique , et le brulot. To what 
it owes its English name I do not know; but its 
French name means simply a thick, nauseating, 
intolerable smoke. 

The smudge is called into being for the ex- 
press purpose of creating a smoke of this kind, 
which is as disagreeable to the mosquito, the 
black-fly, and the midge as it is to the man 
whom they are devouring. But the man sur- 
vives the smoke, while the insects succumb to 
it, being destroyed or driven away. Therefore 
the smudge, dark and bitter in itself, frequently 
becomes, like adversity, sweet in its uses. It 
must be regarded as a form of fire with which 
man has made friends under the pressure of a 
cruel necessity. 

It would seem as if it ought to be the simplest 
affair in the world to light up a smudge. And 
so it is — if you are not trying. 

An attempt to produce almost any other kind 


THE OPEN FIRE 

of a fire will bring forth smoke abundantly. 
But when you deliberately undertake to create 
a smudge, flames break from the wettest tim- 
ber, and green moss blazes with a furious heat. 
You hastily gather handfuls of seemingly in- 
combustible material and throw it on the fire, 
but the conflagration increases. Grass and 
green leaves hesitate for an instant and then 
flash up like tinder. The more you put on, the 
more your smudge rebels against its proper 
task of smudging. It makes a pleasant warmth 
to encourage the black-flies; and bright light to 
attract and cheer the mosquitoes. Your effort 
is a brilliant failure. 

The proper way to make a smudge is this. 
Begin with a very little, lowly fire. Let it be 
bright, but not ambitious. Don’t try to make 
a smoke yet. 

Then gather a good supply of stuff which 
seems likely to suppress fire without smother- 
ing it. Moss of a certain kind will do, but not 
the soft, feathery moss that grows so deep 
among the spruce-trees. Half-decayed wood is 
good; spongy, moist, unpleasant stuff, a vege- 
table wet blanket. The bark of dead ever- 
green trees, hemlock, cedar, or balsam is better 
still. Gather a plentiful store of it. But don’t 
try to make a smoke yet. 

Let your fire burn a while longer; cheer it up 
227 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


a little. Get some clear, resolute, unquench- 
able coals aglow in the heart of it. Don’t try 
to make a smoke yet. 

Now pile on your smouldering fuel. Fan it 
with your hat. Kneel down and blow it, and 
in ten minutes you will have a smoke that will 
make you wish you had never been born. 

That is the proper way to make a smudge. 
But the easiest way is to ask your guide to make 
it for you. 

If he makes it in an old iron pot, so much 
the better, for then you can move it around to 
the windward when the breeze veers, and carry 
it into your tent without risk of setting every- 
thing on fire, and even take it with you in the 
canoe while you are fishing. 

Some of the pleasantest pictures in the angler’s 
gallery of remembrance are framed in the smoke 
that rises from a smudge. 

With my eyes shut, I can call up a vision of 
eight birch-bark canoes floating side by side on 
Moosehead Lake, on a fair June morning, fifteen 
years ago. They are anchored off Green Island, 
riding easily on the long, gentle waves. In the 
stern of each canoe there is a guide with a long- 
handled net; in the bow, an angler with a light 
fly-rod; in the middle, a smudge-kettle, smoking 
steadily. In the air to the windward of the 
££8 


THE OPEN FIRE 


little fleet hovers a swarm of flies drifting down 
on the shore breeze, with bloody purpose in their 
breasts, but baffled by the protecting smoke. 
In the water to the leeward plays a school of 
speckled trout, feeding on the minnows that 
hang around the sunken ledges of rock. As a 
larger wave than usual passes over the ledges, 
it lifts the fish up, and you can see the big fel- 
lows, three, and four, and even five pounds 
apiece, poising themselves in the clear brown 
water. A long cast will send the fly over one 
of them. Let it sink a foot. Draw it up with 
a fluttering motion. Now the fish sees it, and 
turns to catch it. There is a yellow gleam in 
the depth, a sudden swirl on the surface; you 
strike sharply, and the trout is matching his 
strength against the spring of your four ounces 
of split bamboo. 

You can guess at his size, as he breaks water, 
by the breadth of his tail: a pound of weight to 
an inch of tail, — that is the traditional measure, 
and it usually comes pretty close to the mark, 
at least in the case of large fish. But it is never 
safe to record the weight until the trout is in 
the canoe. As the Canadian hunters say, 
4 ‘Sell not the skin of the bear while he carries 
it.” 

Now the breeze that blows over Green Island 
229 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


drops away, and the smoke of the eight smudge- 
kettles falls like a thick curtain. The canoes, 
the dark shores of Norcross Point, the twin 
peaks of Spencer Mountain, the dim blue sum- 
mit of Katahdin, the dazzling sapphire sky, the 
flocks of fleece-white clouds shepherded on high 
by the western wind, all have vanished. With 
closed eyes I see another vision, still framed in 
smoke, — a vision of yesterday. 

It is a wild river flowing into the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence, on the Cote Nord , far down towards 
Labrador. There is a long, narrow, swift pool 
between two parallel ridges of rock. Over the 
ridge on the right pours a cataract of pale yellow 
foam. At the bottom of the pool, the water 
slides down into a furious rapid, and dashes 
straight through an impassable gorge hah a 
mile to the sea. The pool is full of salmon, 
leaping merrily in their delight at coming into 
their native stream. The air is full of black- 
flies, rejoicing in the warmth of the July sun. 
On a slippery point of rock, below the fall, are 
two anglers, tempting the fish and enduring the 
flies. Behind them is an old habitant raising a 
mighty column of smoke. 

Through the cloudy pillar which keeps back 
the Egyptian host, you see the waving of a long 
rod. A silver-gray fly with a barbed tail darts 
230 


THE OPEN FIRE 


out across the pool, swings around with the cur- 
rent, well under water, and slowly works past 
the big rock in the centre, just at the head of 
the rapid. Almost past it, but not quite: for 
suddenly the fly disappears; the line begins to 
run out; the reel sings sharp and shrill; a sal- 
mon is hooked. 

But how well is he hooked? That is the 
question. This is no easy pool to play a fish 
in. There is no chance to jump into a canoe 
and drop below him, and get the current to 
help you in drowning him. You cannot follow 
him along the shore. You cannot even lead 
him into quiet water, where the gaffer can creep 
near to him unseen and drag him in with a 
quick stroke. You must fight your fish to a 
finish, and all the advantages are on his side. 
The current is terribly strong. If he makes up 
his mind to go downstream to the sea, the only 
thing you can do is to hold him by main force; 
and then it is ten to one that the hook tears 
out or the leader breaks. 

It is not in human nature for one man to 
watch another handling a fish in such a place 
without giving advice. “Keep the tip of your 
rod up. Don’t let your reel overrun. Stir him 
up a little, he ’s sulking. Don’t let him ‘ jig,’ 
or you ’ll lose him. You ’re playing him too 
231 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


hard. There, he ’s going to jump again. Drop 
your tip. Stop him, quick ! he ’s going down 
the rapid !” 

Of course the man who is playing the salmon 
does not like this. If he is quick-tempered, 
sooner or later he tells his counsellor to shut up. 
But if he is a gentle, early-Christian kind of a 
man, wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove, 
he follows the advice that is given to him, 
promptly and exactly. Then, when it is all 
ended, and he has seen the big fish, with the 
line over his shoulder, poised for an instant on 
the crest of the first billow of the rapid, and has 
felt the leader stretch and give and snap ! — then 
he can have the satisfaction, while he reels in 
his slack line, of saying to his friend, “Well, old 
man, I did everything just as you told me. 
But I think if I had pushed that fish a little 
harder at the beginning, as I wanted to , I might 
have saved him.” 

But really, of course, the chances were all 
against it. In such a pool, most of the larger 
fish get away. Their weight gives them a tre- 
mendous pull. The fish that are stopped from 
going into the rapid, and dragged back from the 
curling wave, are usually the smaller ones. 
Here they are, — twelve pounds, eight pounds, 
six pounds, five pounds and a half,/ow pounds! 

232 


THE OPEN FIRE 


Is not this the smallest salmon that you ever 
saw ? Not a grilse, you understand, but a real 
salmon, of brightest silver, hall-marked with St. 
Andrew’s cross. 

Now let us sit down for a moment and watch 
the fish trying to leap up the falls. There is a 
clear jump of about ten feet, and above that an 
apparently impossible climb of ten feet more 
up a ladder of twisting foam. A salmon darts 
from the boiling water at the bottom of the fall 
like an arrow from a bow. He rises in a beau- 
tiful curve, fins laid close to his body and tail 
quivering; but he has miscalculated his distance. 
He is on the downward curve when the water 
strikes him and tumbles him back. A bold 
little trout, not more than eighteen inches long, 
makes a jump at the side of the fall, where the 
water is thin, and is rolled over and over nuthe 
spray. A larger salmon rises close beside us 
with a tremendous rush, bumps his nose against 
a jutting rock, and flops back into the pool. 
Now comes a fish who has made his calculations 
exactly. He leaves the pool about eight feet 
from the foot of the fall, rises swiftly, spreads 
his fins, and curves his tail as if he were flying, 
strikes the water where it is thickest just be- 
low the brink, holds on desperately, and drives 
himself, with one last wriggle, through the bend- 
233 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


in g stream, over the edge, and up the first step 
of the foaming stairway. He has obeyed the 
strongest instinct of his nature, and gone up to 
make love in the highest fresh water that he 
can reach. 

The smoke of the smudge-fire is sharp and tear- 
ful, but a man can learn to endure a good deal of 
it when he can look through its rings at such 
scenes as these. 

V 

THE LITTLE FRIENDSHIP-FIRE 

There are times and seasons when the angler 
has no need of any of the three fires of which 
we have been talking. He sleeps in a house. 
His breakfast and dinner are cooked for him in 
a kitchen. He is in no great danger from 
black-flies or mosquitoes. All he needs now, 
as he sets out to spend a day on the Neversink, 
or the Willowemoc, or the Shepaug, or the 
Swiftwater, is a good lunch in his pocket, and 
a little friendship-fire to burn pleasantly beside 
him while he eats his frugal fare and prolongs 
his noonday rest. 

This form of fire does less work than any 
other in the world. Yet it is far from being 
useless; and I, for one, should be sorry to live 
without it. Its only use is to make a visible 
234 


THE OPEN FIRE 


centre of interest where there are two or three 
anglers eating their lunch together, or to supply 
a kind of companionship to a lone fisherman. It 
is kindled and burns for no other purpose than 
to give you the sense of being at home and at 
ease. Why the fire should do this, I cannot 
tell, but it does. 

You may build your friendship-fire in almost 
any way that pleases you; but this is the way 
in which you shall build it best. You have no 
axe, of course, so you must look about for the 
driest sticks that you can find. Do not seek 
them close beside the stream, for there they are 
likely to be water-soaked; but go back into the 
woods a bit and gather a good armful of fuel. 
Then break it, if you can, into lengths of about 
two feet, and construct your fire in the follow- 
ing fashion. 

Lay two sticks parallel, and put between them 
a pile of dried grass, dead leaves, small twigs, 
and the paper in which your lunch was wrapped. 
Then lay two other sticks crosswise on top of 
your first pair. Strike your match and touch 
your kindlings. As the fire catches, lay on other 
pairs of sticks, each pair crosswise to the pair 
that is below it, until you have a pyramid of 
flame. This is “a Micmac fire” such as the 
Indians make in the woods. 

23 5 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


Now you can pull off your wading-boots and 
warm your feet at the blaze. You can toast 
your bread if you like. You can even make 
shift to broil one of your trout, fastened on the 
end of a birch twig if you have a fancy that 
way. When your hunger is satisfied, you shake 
out the crumbs for the birds and the squirrels, 
pick up a stick with a coal at the end to light 
your pipe, put some more wood on your fire, 
and settle down for an hour’s reading if you 
have a book in your pocket, or for a good talk 
if you have a comrade with you. 

The stream of time flows swift and smooth, 
by such a fire as this. The moments slip past 
unheeded; the sun sinks down his western arch; 
the shadows begin to fall across the brook; it 
is time to move on for the afternoon fishing. 
The fire has almost burned out. But do not 
trust it too much. Throw some sand over it, 
or bring a hatful of water from the brook to 
pour on it, until you are sure that the last glow- 
ing ember is extinguished, and nothing but the 
black coals and the charred ends of the sticks 
are left. 

Even the little friendship-fire must keep the 
law of the bush. All lights out when their pur- 
pose is fulfilled ! 


236 


THE OPEN FIRE 


VI 

ALTARS OF REMEMBRANCE 

It is a question that we have often debated, 
in the informal meetings of our Petrine Club: 
Which is pleasanter, — to fish an old stream, or a 
new one ? 

The younger members are all for the “ fresh 
woods and pastures new.” They speak of the 
delight of turning off from the high-road into 
some faintly-marked trail; following it blindly 
through the forest, not knowing how far you 
have to go; hearing the voice of waters sounding 
through the woodland; leaving the path im- 
patiently and striking straight across the un- 
derbrush; scrambling down a steep bank, push- 
ing through a thicket of alders, and coming out 
suddenly, face to face with a beautiful, strange 
brook. It reminds you, of course, of some old 
friend. It is a little like the Beaverkill, or the 
Ausable, or the Gale River. And yet it is dif- 
ferent. Every stream has its own character 
and disposition. Your new acquaintance in- 
vites you to a day of discoveries. If the water 
is high, you will follow it down, and have easy 
fishing. If the water is low, you will go up- 
stream, and fish “fine and far-off.” Every 
237 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


turn in the avenue which the little river has 
made for you opens up a new view, — a rocky 
gorge where the deep pools are divided by 
white-footed falls; a lofty forest where the 
shadows are deep and the trees arch overhead; 
a flat, sunny stretch where the stream is spread 
out, and pebbly islands divide the channels, and 
the big fish are lurking at the sides in the shel- 
tered corners under the bushes. From scene 
to scene you follow on, delighted and expectant, 
until the night suddenly drops its veil, and then 
you will be lucky if you can find your way home 
in the dark ! 

Yes, it is all very good, this exploration of 
new streams. But, for my part, I like still 
better to go back to a familiar little river, and 
fish or dream along the banks where I have 
dreamed and fished before. I know every bend 
and curve: the sharp turn where the water runs 
under the roots of the old hemlock-tree; the 
snaky glen, where the alders stretch their arms 
far out across the stream; the meadow reach, 
where the trout are fat and silvery, and will 
only rise about sunrise or sundown, unless the 
day is cloudy; the Naiad’s Elbow, where the 
brook rounds itself, smooth and dimpled, to 
embrace a cluster of pink laurel-bushes. All 
these I know; yes, and almost every current 
238 


THE OPEN FIRE 


and eddy and backwater I know long before I 
come to it. I remember where I caught the 
big trout the first year I came to the stream; 
and where I lost a bigger one. I remember the 
pool where there were plenty of good fish last 
year, and wonder whether they are there 
now. 

Better things than these I remember: the 
companions with whom I have followed the 
stream in days long past; the rendezvous with a 
comrade at the place where the rustic bridge 
crosses the brook; the hours of sweet converse 
beside the friendship-fire; the meeting at twi- 
light with my lady Graygown and the children 
who have come down by the wood-road to walk 
home with me. 

Surely it is pleasant to follow an old stream. 
Flowers grow along its banks which are not to 
be found anywhere else in the wide world. 
“ There is rosemary, that ’s for remembrance; 
and there is pansies, that ’s for thoughts ! ” 

One May evening, a couple of years since, I 
was angling in the Swiftwater, and came upon 
Joseph Jefferson, stretched out on a large rock 
in midstream, and casting the fly down a long 
pool. He had passed the threescore years and 
ten, but he was as eager and as happy as a boy 
in his fishing. 


239 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


“ You here!” I cried. “What good fortune 
brought you into these waters?” 

“Ah,” he answered, “I fished this brook forty- 
five years ago. It was in the Paradise Valley 
that I first thought of Rip Van Winkle. I 
wanted to come back again for the sake of old 
times.” 

But what has all this to do with an open fire ? 
I will tell you. It is at the places along the 
stream, where the little flames of love and friend- 
ship have been kindled in bygone days, that the 
past returns most vividly. These are the altars 
of remembrance. 

It is strange how long a small fire will leave 
its mark. The charred sticks, the black coals, 
do not decay easily. If they lie well up the 
bank, out of reach of the spring floods, they 
will stay there for years. If you have chanced 
to build a rough fireplace of stones from the 
brook, it seems almost as if it would last forever. 

There is a mossy knoll beneath a great butter- 
nut-tree on the Swiftwater where such a fire- 
place was built four years ago; and whenever I 
come to that place now I lay the rod aside, and 
sit down for a little while by the fast-flowing 
water, and remember. 

This is what I see: A man wading up the 
stream, with a creel over his shoulder, and per- 
240 


THE OPEN FIRE 


haps a dozen trout in it; two little lads in gray 
corduroys running down the path through the 
woods to meet him, one carrying, a frying-pan 
and a kettle, the other with a basket of lunch on 
his arm. Then I see the bright flames leaping 
up in the fireplace, and hear the trout sizzling 
in the pan, and smell the appetizing odour. 
Now I see the lads coming back across the foot- 
bridge that spans the stream, with a bottle of 
milk from the nearest farmhouse. They are 
laughing and teetering as they balance along 
the single plank. Now the table is spread on 
the moss. How good the lunch tastes ! Never 
were there such pink-fleshed trout, such crisp 
and savoury slices of broiled bacon. Douglas, 
(the beloved doll that the younger lad shame- 
facedly brings out from the pocket of his jacket,) 
must certainly have some of it. And after the 
lunch is finished, and the bird’s portion has been 
scattered on the moss, we creep carefully on our 
hands and knees to the edge of the brook, and 
look over the bank at the big trout that is pois- 
ing himself in the amber water. We have tried 
a dozen times to catch him, but never succeeded. 

The next time, perhaps 

Well, the fireplace is still standing. The but- 
ternut-tree spreads its broad branches above the 
stream. The violets and the bishop’s-caps and 
241 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


the wild anemones are sprinkled over the banks. 
The yellow-throat and the water-thrush and 
the vireos still sing the same tunes in the thicket. 
And the elder of the two lads often comes back 
with me to that pleasant place and shares my 
fisherman’s luck beside the Swiftwater. 

But the younger lad ? 

Ah, my little Barney, you have gone to fol- 
low a new stream, — clear as crystal, — flowing 
through fields of wonderful flowers that never 
fade. It is a strange river to Teddy and me; 
strange and very far away. Some day we shall 
see it with you; and you will teach us the names 
of those blossoms that do not wither. But till 
then, little Barney, the other lad and I will 
follow the old stream that flows by the wood- 
land fireplace, — your altar. 

Rue grows here. Yes, there is plenty of rue. 
But there is also rosemary, that ’s for remem- 
brance ! And close beside it I see a little 
heart’s-ease. 


242 


“LITTLE BOATIE” 


/ 
































































































































































































































I 






































































































































































































■ 









































“ LITTLE BOATIE ” 

A SLUMBER-SONG 

FOR THE FISHERMAN’S CHILD 

T^URL your sail, my little boatie; 

A Here ’s the haven still and deep, 
Where the dreaming tides in-streaming 
Up the channel creep. 

Now the sunset breeze is dying; 

Hear the plover, landward flying. 

Softly down the twilight crying; 

Come to anchor, little boatie. 

In the port of Sleep. 

Far away, my little boatie, 

Roaring waves are white with foam; 
Ships are striving, onward driving, 

Day and night they roam. 
Father ’s at the deep-sea trawling. 

In the darkness, rowing, hauling, 

While the hungry winds are calling, — 
God protect him, little boatie, 

Bring him safely home ! 

245 


FISHERMAN’S LUCK 


Not for you, my little boatie. 

Is the wide and weary sea; 

You ’re too slender, and too tender. 

You must bide with me. 

All day long you have been straying 
Up and down the shore and playing; 
Come to harbour, no delaying ! 

Day is over, little boatie. 

Night falls suddenly. 

Furl your sail, my little boatie; 

Fold your wings, my weary dove. 
Dews are sprinkling, stars are twinkling 
Drowsily above. 

Cease from sailing, cease from rowing; 
Rock upon the dream-tide, knowing 
Safely o’er your rest are glowing, 

All the night, my little boatie. 
Harbour-lights of love. 


246 





INDEX 

f * 















INDEX 


Adam: his early education, 87; 

his opinion of woman, 112. 
“Afghan’s Knife, The,” 173. 
Algebra: the equation of life, 12. 
“Alice Lorraine,” 150. 

“Along New England Roads,” 
147. 

Altars of remembrance, 240. 
“Amateur Angler’s Days in Dove 
Dale, An,” 37, 145. 

“American Angler’s Book, The,” 

146. 

“American Salmon Angler, The,” 

147. 

“Among New England Hills,” 147. 
“Angler, The Compleat.” See 
Walton, Izaak. 

Angler: the education of an, 113. 
“Angler’s Guide, The,” 141. 
Angling: an affair of luck, 5; a 
means of escape from tcedium 
vitae, 13; books about, classified, 
139, 140. 

“Angling Reminiscences” of 
Thomas Tod Stoddart, 143. 
“Angling Sketches,” by Andrew 
Lang, 146. 

Antony: deceived by Cleopatra, 

148. 

Arden, the Forest of: direction 
for reaching, 14. 

Ascension Day: good for fishing, 6. 

Bald Mountains, 183. 

Banquets: two delectable ones, 
19-21. 


Baptists, Seventh-Day: an in- 
ducement to join them, 6. 
Barber: the philosophic conduct 
of a, 16. 

Barker, Thomas, 140. 

Bartlett, Mr. John: piscatorial 
collection of, 139. 

Bergen: town of, 166. 

Berries, 77; Izaak Walton quoted 
on, 78. 

Bethune, Rev. Dr. George W., an 
editor of Walton, 147. 

Birds: their unexpectedness, 22; 
their courage, 24, 202; their 
manner of singing, 56-59, 75. 
Birds named: 

Blue jay, 197. 

Boblink, 74. 

Brown thrush, 58. 

Catbird, 97, 197. 

Crow, 202. 

English sparrow, not a bird, 
57, 99. 

Grosbeak, rose-breasted, 58. 
Hooded warbler, 23. 

Kingbird, 202. 

Mockingbird, 58. 

Oriole, 58. 

Parrot, 57. 

Partridge, 24. 

Pigeon-hawk, 181. 

Redstart, 23. 

Robin, 58. 

Rose-breasted grosbeak, 58. 
Spotted sandpiper, 25. 
Swallow, 182. 


249 


INDEX 


Thrush, 182. 

Veery, 58. 

Vireos, 242. 

Water-thrush, 242. 

White-throat, 58. 

Wood thrush, 58. 

Wren, 58. 

Yellow-throat, 181, 242. 

Yellow warblers, 97. 

Black, William: his knowledge of 
angling, 151. 

Blackmore, R. D., 146; fishing 
described by, 150. 

“Book of the Black Bass,” 147. 

Burgund: church at, 166. 

Boyle, Hon. Robert, 144. 

Brogue: as an ornament of speech, 
69. 

Brook: a lazy, idle, 193; in the 
bower, 194; considered as a 
sign, 198; the lesson of a, 203; 
fishing in a, 207. 

Browsing: a diversion for anglers, 
76. 

Burroughs, John, 138. 

Butler, Dr. William: his pleasant 
saying about the strawberry, 79; 
his character as a physician and 
a philosopher, 79-80. 

“By Meadow and Stream,” 145. 

Byron, Lord: a detractor of Wal- 
ton, 136. 

Camp-fire: the art of kindling a, 

220 . 

Camping: pleasures of, 17. 

Cannon Mountain, 183. 

“Chalk-Stream Studies,” 144. 

Chance: a good word with a bad 
reputation, 11. 

Chatto, William Andrew, 130, 146. 

Cheerfulness: a virtue in good 
talk, 70. 


Christian character: illustrated, 
30. 

Civilization: a nervous disease, 
199. 

Cleopatra, 148. 

“Cloister and the Hearth, The,” 
104. 

Colquhoun, John, 142. 
Conversation: compared with 

talk, 13. 

Cook: a good, 224. 

Cooking-fire: the art of kindling 

а, 223. 

Cotton, Charles, 51, 140. 
Crinkle-root, 77. 

“Crocker’s Hole,” 146. 

Crosby, Chancellor Howard: a 
good talker, 64. 

Davy, Sir Humphry: slighted by 
Christopher North, 143. 

“Days in Clover,” 145. 

Days: Superstitions about them, 

б . 

Dennys, John: “The Secrets of 
Angling,” quoted, 137. 
DePeyster, Mr. and Mrs.: the 
success of, in the art of the 
angler, 113. 

DeQuincey, Thomas, 139. 
Deucalion: the first artistic fish- 
erman, 5. 

Dickinson, Emily: quoted, 86. 
Drivstuen, 173. 

Eagle Cliff, 183. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 80. 

Elk: the Tarn of the, 172. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo: quoted, 
106. 

English sparrows: beasts, not 
birds, 57. 


250 


INDEX 


“Essays Critical and Imagina- 
tive” of Christopher North, 
143. 

Etnadal, 164. 

“Ettrick Shepherd,” the, 51. 

Fagernaes, 167. 

Faleide, 170. 

Fawkes, Guy, 80. 

Fire: fear of animals of, 215; kin- 
dling a fire in the woods, 217; 
the camp-fire, 219; the cooking- 
fire, 223; the smudge-fire, 226; 
the little friendship-fire, 234. 

Fish: their way wardness, 42, 211; 
how an angler feels about them, 
26; whether they can hear, 51- 
53; domesticated, 88. 

Fish named: 

Grass-pike, 205. 

Grayling, 50, 175. 

Grilse, 233. 

Ouananiche, 36, 37, 42, 43. 

Pickerel, 132. 

Pike, 11, 88. 

Salmon, 30, 36, 233. 

Sunfish, 205. 

Trout, 51, 53, 140, 150, 167, 
175, 205, 209, 211, 225, 229. 

“Fishin’ Jimmy,” 147. 

Fishing: 'passim, ; an affair of 
luck, 5; lucky days for, 6; a 
means of escape from routine, 
13; the only eventful mode of 
life, 13; good luck in, deserving 
of gratitude, 27; the schooling 
of a woman angler, 114; catch- 
ing pickerel through the ice, 132; 
the best winter diversion in- 
doors, 135; books on, 139-141; 
fish and fishing, 146; in old 
streams and new, 236. 


“Fish-Tails and a Few Others,” 
145. 

Flies: various theories for the use 
of, 42; the grasshopper a last 
hope, 43; style in, 140. 

Flowers: wild and tame, 84; luck 
in finding, 86. 

Flowers named : 

Anemone, 242. 

Anemone, double rue, 86. 
Bishop’s-cap, 241. 

Gentian, fringed, 86. 
Hare-bells, 75. 

Heart’ s-ease, 242. 

Laurel, mountain, 75. 
Loose-strife, yellow, 75. 
Orchid, purple-fringed, 75. 
Prince’s pine, 75. 

Rosemary, 239, 242. 

Rue, 242. 

Twin-flower, 76. 

Violet, 241. 

“Fly-Fisher’s Entomology, The,” 
53. 

“Fly-Rods and Fly-Tackle,” 147. 
Fontainebleau, 88. 

Forester, Frank, 146. 

Forests: real and artificial, 89. 
Fox: red, 197. 

Franck, Richard: a detractor of 
Walton, 136. 

Franconia Mountains, 182. 
Freedom of spirit: an essential of 
good company, 67. 

“Fresh Woods,” 145. 

Friendliness: its magical power, 
71. 

Friendship-fire, the little, 234. 

Gambling: a harmless variety of, 

10 . 

“Game Fish of the North,” 147. 
Garfield, Mount, 183. 


251 


INDEX 


Geiranger-Fjord : cliffs of, 166. 

Golf: respectfully alluded to, 63. 

Gratitude: a virtue, 27. 

Graygown, my Lady: her praise, 
dedication, 70, 158, 170, 198. 

Grayling, 50. 

Great South Bay, the, 191. 

Greetings: their significance, 3; 
superior quality of the angler’s 
salutation, 5. 

Grey, Sir Edward, 34. 

Habits: the pleasure of changing 
them, 13. 

Hall, Bradnock, 145. 

Hamlet, 103. 

Hastings, Lady Elizabeth: her 
“liberal education,” 106. 

“Heart, A Contented,” 192. 

“Heart of Midlothian, The,” 104. 

Henry Esmond: romantic love in, 
104. 

Higginson, Colonel Thomas Went- 
worth: quoted, 86. 

Honeymoon: a Norwegian, 157. 

Houses: the disadvantage of liv- 
ing in them, 14; built by four- 
footed architects, 216. 

Humour: as a means of grace, 70. 

“Hypatia,” 104. 

“I Go A-Fishing,” 147. 

Indolence, defined, 200; the 
teachers of, 203. 

Indvik Fjord, 170. 

Irving, Washington: quoted, 74, 
152. 

James, William: His defence of 
chance, 11. 

James of Scotland, 80. 

Jefferies, Richard: quoted, 180. 


Jefferson, Joseph: as an angler, 
51; as fisherman, 239. 

Jerkin, 166. 

“John Inglesant,” 104. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel: his word 
“clubable,” 56; quoted, 96. 

“Jungle Books, The,” 104. 

Kant, Immanuel: his rules for 
talk, 61. 

Kariol, 162, 166. 

Katahdin, Mount, 230. 

King, Clarence: a good talker, 61. 

“King Lear,” 103. 

Kingsley, Charles, 144. 

Kinsman Mountain, 183. 

Lafayette, Mount, 183. 

Lake George: a scene on, 10 . 

Lakes named: 

George, 10, 161. 

Loenvand, the, 170. 

Moosehead, 116, 228. 

Pharaoh, 125. 

Rangeley, 119. 

St. John, 45. 

Lamb, Charles: quoted, 2; his 
essays, 83, 138. 

“Land of Steady Habits, The,” 13. 

Landaff valley, 183. 

Lang, Mr. Andrew: his “Angling 
Sketches,” 146. 

Life: reflections, chiefly upon its 
uncertainty, 12, 19, 31, 32, 91; 
the philosophy of a quiet life, 
200-203. 

“Little Boatie,” 245. 

“Little Flowers of St. Francis,” 
quoted, 19. 

Loenvand, the, 170. 

Long Island: a good place to cure 
insomnia, 191. 

“Lorna Doone,” 104, 146, 150. 


252 


INDEX 


Love: romantic love not the 
“greatest thing in the world,” 
104. 

Lovers: sudden appearance of, in 
the landscape in spring, 96; 
their relation to the landscape, 
96; charm added to the land- 
scape by, 96; society arranged 
for their convenience, 97. 

Lowell, James Russell: quoted, 
48; alluded to, 138. 

Lucian: his dubious fish story, 52. 

Luck: indispensable to fishermen, 
5; varieties of, 6; the charm of 
trying it, 8; a subject for grati- 
tude, 28; not to be boasted of, 
29; a parable of life, 30; the 
way to make friends of it, 32. 

Luther, Martin: his opinion of 
pike, 11. 

Lytton, Sir Edward Bulwer, his 
fishy advice, 150. 

“Macbeth,” 103. 

Macduff, the Reverend Bellico- 
sus, 63. 

“Madame Delphine,” 104. 

Malignancy: a brilliant example 
of, 17. 

Marriage: philosophically con- 

sidered, 104-106, 158. 

Marston, Mr. Edward, 145. 

Mary, “Bloody” Queen, 80. 

“Maxims and Hints for an Ang- 
ler,” 144. 

McCabe, W. Gordon: how he 
crossed the Atlantic, 69. 

McCosh, Dr. James: his manner 
of speech, 69. 

Milton, John: quoted, 56. 

Montaigne, M. de: quoted, title- 
page, 61 ; variations on a theme 
from, 63. 


Moody, Martin, Esq., 134. 

“Moor and the Loch, The,” 142. 
Moosilauke, 183. 

Mountains: the real owner of the, 
183. 

“My Novel,” 150. 

Nedre Vasenden: the station at, 
166. 

Newport: sport at, 7. 

Norcross Point, 230. 

Norris, Thaddeus, 146. 

North, Christopher, 51, 143. 
Norway: a honeymoon in, 159. 
“Notre Dame,” 104. 

“Occasional Reflections” of Hon. 

Robert Boyle, 144. 

Odnaes, 161, 162. 

“Ole ’Stracted,” 104. 

Othello, 103. 

“Owl Creek Letters,” 147. 

Parrots: productive of un-Chris- 
tian feelings, 57. 

“Peace and War,” 104. 

Penn, Richard, 144. 

Peppermint, 77. 

Pike, 11, 88. 

Piscator, 138. 

Plutarch: his fish story of An- 
thony and Cleopatra, 148. 
Preserves: for fish, 87. 

Pride: unbecoming in a fisher- 
man, 29. 

Prime, Dr. William C., 147. 
“Procession of the Flowers, The,” 
86 . 

Pronunciation, correct: as a 
mania, 68. 

“Quo Vadis,” 104. 



253 


INDEX 


Rabbit: cotton-tail, 197. 
“Rambles with a Fishing-Rod,” 
of E. S. Roscoe, 145. 
Randsfjord, 160. 

Raphael, the Archangel: his one- 
sided affability, 56. 

Rauma: the vale of the, 175. 
“Recreations of Christopher North, 
The,” 143. 

“ Redgauntlet ” : angling in, 149. 
Remembrance: altars of, 240. 
“Rip Van Winkle,” 103, 240. 
“Rise of Silas Lapham, The,” 104. 
Ristigouche, 25. 

“Rivals, The,” 103. 

Rivers, named: 

Ausable, 237. 

Baegna, 164. 

Bouquet, 169. 

Dove, 31. 

Gale, 182, 237. 

Hudson, 84. 

Lea, 31. 

Marshpee, 51. 

Meacham, 115. 
Metabetchouan, 71. 

Moose, 116. 

Naeselv, 167. 

Natasheebo, 126. 

Never sink, 234. 

New, 31. 

Penobscot, 169. 

P’tit Saguenay, 28. 
Randsfjord, 160. 

Rauma, 175. 

Ristigouche, 25. 

Saguenay, 29, 30. 

Shepaug, 234. 

Swiftwater, 75, 87, 234, 239, 
240, 242. 

Ulvaa, 175. 

Willowemoc, 234. 


Rob Roy: an eel named, 52. 
“Rod in India, The,” 145. 
“Romola,” 104. 

Romsdal, The, 166, 174. 

Ronalds, Mr.: quoted, 53. 
Roosevelt, Mr. Robert B., 147. 
Roscoe, E. S., 145. 

“Roundabout Papers,” 59. 

Sabbath-Day Point, 9. 

Sage, Mr. Dean: piscatorial li- 
brary of, 139. 

Saguenay, the Big, 29, 30. 
Saguenay, the Little, 28. 

Salmon, 27, 51. 

“Salmonia,” 143. 

“Schuylkill Fishing Company,” 
146. 

Scott, Sir Walter: quoted, 149. 
Sermon: a good one, 50. 

Single witz, Solomon: quoted, 112, 
156. 

“Sketch Book,” 152. 

Skogstad: the station at, 168. 
Skydsgut, 163. 

Slosson, Mrs. Annie Trumbull: 

her “Fishin’ Jimmy,” 147. 
Smallness: not a mark of inf err 
ority, 83. 

Smith, Captain John, 82. 

Smudge; the art of kindling a, 
226. 

Spearmint, 77. 

St. Anthony of Padua, 50. 

St. Brandan, 50. 

St. Francis of Assisi, 19. 

St. Peter, 12, 28. 

Stedman, Mr. Edmund Clarence, 
141. 

Steele, Richard: quoted, 106. 
Stevenson, Robert Louis: quoted, 
54, 190. 


254 


INDEX 


Stoddart, Thomas Tod, 142. 

Stolkjaerres, 166. 

Storm King Club: a festival of, 
84. 

Strawberry, the: one that God 
made, 78; imputed to England, 
80; wild and tame, 83. 

Stuefloten, 174, 175. 

Style: the value of, 83. 

Summer Schools: persons for 
whom they have no attractions, 
9. 

Sunday: fishing on, 6. 

“Superior Fishing,” 147. 

Swiftwater: a well-named brook, 
75. 

Talk: anglers urged to, 49-51; 
varieties of, 58-62; obstacles to 
its perfection, 63, 67, 68. 

Talkability: defined, 54, 55; a 
talkable person, 56; contrasted 
with talkativity, 58; not the 
same as eloquence, 58; com- 
mended, 60-72; the fourfold 
conditions of, 63; goodness, 63; 
freedom, 67; gayety, 70; friend- 
ship, 71. 

Tarn of the Elk, the, 172; trout 
in, 173. 

Telephone: its influence on man- 
ners, 4. 

Tennyson: as a talker, 68; quoted, 
53. 

Tent: life in a, 15. 

Thackeray, W. M.: quoted, 59. 

Thersites: as a journalist, 66. 

Thomas, II. S., 145. 

“Three Musketeers, The,” 104, 
173. 

Timoleon: the unlucky one, 29. 


Tobias, the son of Tobit: his ad- 
venture with a pike, 88. 

Tommy’s Rock: a good place for 
blackfish, 7. 

“Treasure Island,” 173. 

Trees: why boys and girls love 
them, 87. 

Trench, Archbishop, 200. 

Trolley-car: the blessings of its 
absence, 18. 

Trout, 51, 53, 150, 167, 206, 211, 
256; taste of, for flies, 140; in 
Norway, 167; in the Tarn of the 
Elk, 173; in the Rauma in Nor- 
way, 175; a good catch, 209; 
eating vs. catching, 225. 

Twin Mountain, 183. 

Vacations: can be taken without 
long journeys, 14. 

Valders, the vale of, 164, 176. 

Vergil: quoted, 141. 

Virginia: talk in, 69; its straw- 
berries, 80, 82; bread in a Vir- 
ginia country house, 174. 

Walton, Izaak: described, 29, 30; 
quoted, 30, 78; his luck in lit- 
erature, 135; his detractors, 136; 
Dr. Bethune’s edition of, 147; 
fishermen born, not made, 147. 

Warner, Charles Dudley: quoted, 
214. 

Water: emblem of instability, 8. 

Weather: a subject of talk, 55, 61; 
various remarks on, 15-17, 90. 

Webster, Daniel: as an angler, 51. 

Wells, Mr. Henry P., 53, 147. 

Wife: the right kind of a, 72. 

Wilson, Professor John, “M. A.” 
and “F. R. S.,” 143. 

“Winter’s Tale, A,” 103. 


255 


INDEX 


Women wanting in natural abil- 
ity to fish, 121. 

Woods: scenes in the, 75, 89. 
“Words and Their Uses,” 200. 


Wordsworth, William: quoted, 8. 
Wotton, Sir Henry: quoted, 131. 

Youth: a recipe for renewing, 85. 


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